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

Capernaum.
Fantastic tale of a young boy from a poor family in Lebanon who stabs a son-of-a-bitch and sues his parents. Admittedly one of those wanky films that's not so much about something as it is a life experience. We loved it. Good balance of heart-wrenching and hilarious.

Also finally watched Lady Bird on Netflix last night. Admittedly, I'll watch anything with Laurie Metcalf in it - even Big Bang Theory. Loved it, though had to explain to the mrs just what a wasteland Sacramento is.
 
Just discovered Channel Zero, a sci-fi/ horror anthology series that’s been running for four seasons already. Absolutely great within that genre- S2 & 3 boast 100% ratings on Rotten Tomatoes. Recommended to anyone eho likes American Horror Story-style series.
 
Downloaded and watched Beforeigners. Utterly bonkers in a fun way. For no adequately explored reason, people from the past keep popping into the present day where they're treated as refugees. In Norway, they only appear from Victorian Age, Viking Age, and Stone Age. Let's set up a buddy-cop whodunnit with a Viking sidekick!
 
Bit of a Susan George collection

A Small Town in Texas - ropey "thriller" about the conflict between an ex-con and sheriff (George playing the woman stuck in the middle of the two). Don't bother with it.

Tomorrow Never Comes - British-Canadian film directed by Peter Collinson (The Italian Job) with a top cast - Oliver Reed, Donald Pleasance, Raymond Burr, John Osbourne, George. There's a half-decent film here but it's smothered and never really gets going.

Sonny and Jed - Sergio Corbucci spaghetti western, with George playing one half of the couple, Tomas Milian the other half and Telly Savalas the man hunting them down. Not one of Corbucci's best it is mostly spaghetti western by the numbers but there are a couple of nice moments.

Die Screaming Marianne - Pete Walker thriller with George playing the heroine in danger. Usual Walker exploitation fare but for all his faults Walker does have some style and this is easily the best of the four films. The set-up is done very well, though the finale ends up being a little but rushed.
 
Watched Marriage Story on Netflix. Enjoyed it, although when the downtrodden assistant from Baskets showed up as the court-appointed observer it totally ruined any immersion I had. :D
 
Marty1 said:
Terminator Dark Fate.

Watchable but this franchise really has ran out of steam now.

5/10
Click to expand...
I gave it 6. It was basically a "Best Hits" of the Terminator series recreated.
Interesting that Arnie's Terminator is now settled with a family and in the soft furnishings business 🧐
 
D'wards said:
I gave it 6. It was basically a "Best Hits" of the Terminator series recreated.
Interesting that Arnie's Terminator is now settled with a family and in the soft furnishings business 🧐
Click to expand...

Yeah both him and Linda Hamilton showing their age now.
 
Queen & Slim 2019. Wicked film. Handles the subject with responsibility. Instantly charismatic leads - 8/10

Dark Waters - A Teflon nightmare . Tense and all that stuff thrillers have with the extra punch that it is real. Great acting/script/direction and it achieves what it sets out to do so 10/10 .
 
The Marriage of Maria Braun, one of RW Fassbinder’s most famous. I first watched this soon after it came out and maybe because I was too young I didn’t quite get it. It’s always been considered one of Fassbinder’s best and it was his international breakthrough. This time I did get it. Bookended by two explosions, the film is a sharp and funny satire about a woman who is ruthlessly pragmatic and who will stop at nothing from making her life and her constantly delayed marriage, a success in a post-WWII Germany. It also gave me a new appreciation for Hannah Schygulla, who though Fassbinders most famous muse, was never my favourite. She’s great in this.

531C4E33-AAE2-4DD7-B1B6-FAEC5D887966.jpeg
 
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Reactions: Sue
Where is Kyra ? Interesting film with the subject matter close to Ken Loach, but shot like a horror film. Michelle Pfeiffer plays a middle aged woman who lives with and cares for her ailing mother in a small New York apartment. They live off the mothers pension, but when the mother dies, Kyra can’t get a job because she’s considered to old. She is driven to ever desperate measures to keep afloat. Visually this may be the darkest looking film I’ve ever seen. Very glad Pfeiffer is doing more work again, she is great.

22F77976-2EE9-4EA2-802E-90E6BB710BDB.jpeg
 
To be honest the only Fassbinder I've ever seen (I think) was Fear Eats the Soul. Where does that fit into his overall body of work?
 
Idris2002 said:
To be honest the only Fassbinder I've ever seen (I think) was Fear Eats the Soul. Where does that fit into his overall body of work?
Click to expand...
It is generally considered to be among his best and it’s my personal favourite film of his. Maria Braun would be a good one to follow it up with, like Fear Eats the Soul it’s among his more accessible films.

Of the best known directors of the German New Wave of the 70s, Fassbinder is my favourite. His work travels less well than Wenders and Herzog because most of his films are very much about Germany, its post-WWII history and its politics. Herzog and Wenders are more about visuals and atmosphere.

Which reminds me, Wim Wenders cycled past me yesterday, looking dapper as ever. :)
 
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Idris2002 said:
To be honest the only Fassbinder I've ever seen (I think) was Fear Eats the Soul. Where does that fit into his overall body of work?
Click to expand...
They had a Fassbinder season at the BFI last year so I saw quite a few then. I think Fear Eats the Soul was my favourite. (Agreed about Maria Braun but was pretty meh about The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant for example.)
 
Sue said:
They had a Fassbinder season at the BFI last year so I saw quite a few then. I think Fear Eats the Soul was my favourite. (Agreed about Maria Braun but was pretty meh about The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant for example.)
Click to expand...
Petra von Kant basically is a filmed stage play. It's very claustrophobic and like several Fassbinder films it goes on too long, but its one of my favorite movies about fashion. Teh costumes !!!! 😍

8dbfddcced5916533387331175cfae0c.jpg
 
Jojo Rabbit.

Gosh, weren't there a lot of quite nice nazi's! Plenty of good bits, fantasy Hitler worked, but the rest of it was just... a bit shallow and superficial. Moonrise Kingdom with Hitler Youth instead of scouts. Not awful, but pointless.


The Handmaiden (bells and whistles version).

Our mate, who we went to Parasite with last week, said that was the first Korean film he'd seen, so he got invited back to watch this masterpiece. Even better second time around, funny, clever, touching, a bit brutal and, gosh, what a lot of sex there is! Magnificent. he didn't like it, the buffoon.
 
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I watched Jojo Rabbit, which I’ve been putting off because everything about it sounds fucking awful, but I’ve loved most things by Taika Waititi so far so I finally watched it. It was fucking awful.
 
Definitely my least favourite Waititi film, and I liked the sound of it before I watched it. I'm with the "not awful, but pointless" on this.
 
Chz said:
Definitely my least favourite Waititi film, and I liked the sound of it before I watched it. I'm with the "not awful, but pointless" on this.
Click to expand...
This is a case where the attempt at being good natured (a quality all films and TV series by Waititi try to go for) comes up disastrously short in doing justice to its subject matter. Nothing really counts emotionally, even
Scarlett Johansson's death
appears to be quickly forgotten about to keep things light. I didn't find the film funny at all, as much of the comedy comes down to Waititi clowning around as the imaginary Hitler. He did a far better job as the German vampire in What We Do in the Shadows. This review gets to the heart of why this film rings so false for me:

hyperallergic.com said:
Why, precisely, do so many films about “fighting hate” decide that the best way to do this is to redeem or soften racists? We see this in everything from Green Book (which was rewarded with multiple Oscars) to Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (also fêted) to Where Hands Touch (which was thankfully rewarded with nothing but delayed disdain) to The Best of Enemies (which no one really cared about at all, though it is notably the third film mentioned in this article to star Sam Rockwell, man wyd). Jojo comes to understand the error of his ways through getting to know Elsa as a human and unlearning the ideas he’s been taught about Jews. This is good for warming hearts but a completely irrelevant framework for reality; we can’t pair up every racist with a minority to teach them the error of their ways. It also means the film is technically starting from the same premise that racists are working on — that marginalized people have to work to prove their humanity.
Click to expand...

hyperallergic.com

Jojo Rabbit, Billed as a Satire About Nazis, Lacks Any Actual Satirical Wit

Writer-Director Taika Waititi’s latest falls into the same trap of films like Green Book — that marginalized people have to work to prove their humanity
hyperallergic.com hyperallergic.com
 
Reno said:
This is a case where the attempt at being good natured (a quality all films and TV series by Waititi try to go for) comes up disastrously short in doing justice to its subject matter. Nothing really counts emotionally, even
Scarlett Johansson's death
appears to be quickly forgotten about to keep things light. I didn't find the film funny at all, as much of the comedy comes down to Waititi clowning around as the imaginary Hitler. He did a far better job as the German vampire in What We Do in the Shadows. This review gets to the heart of why this film rings so false for me:



hyperallergic.com

Jojo Rabbit, Billed as a Satire About Nazis, Lacks Any Actual Satirical Wit

Writer-Director Taika Waititi’s latest falls into the same trap of films like Green Book — that marginalized people have to work to prove their humanity
hyperallergic.com hyperallergic.com
Click to expand...
I didn't much like it and I found the bit you spoilered completely manipulative. I also came out and said to the friend I saw it with
'has Sam Rockwell got it in his contract that he always has to be redeemed at the end'?
 
Superman: Red Son

based on the comic of the same name where superman surfaces in 40s russia rather than in america. Its good but they've changed the story drastically. In this one Red Superman
is eventually taught the error of his ways by president luthor and his wife Louis Lane-Luthor, a bit of a cop out I feel. I preferred the comic book ending
. 7/10
 
The Art of Self Defense. Which I thought would be shite.

Turns out it's a wonderful dark comedy but if you've been through any martial arts grading type structure just has extra laughs.

There are a lot of jodan age ukes.
 


Saw this Greek film. Suntan

I thought it was really good though the end was a bit over the top.

As Im the roughly the age of the main character I watched this with my head in my hands going no don't go there at the main character. Says that , excruciatingly, this film is spot on.

Middle aged man goes to small island to work as a GP. Its quiet and peaceful. Then summer comes along and suddenly the north European hedonist young people come to the island.

He treats one them and falls into hanging out with them. His lonely life suddenly is changed.

He falls for one of the young women in this group. Its a film where I was going don't do this as the film unfolds.

A film of a man destroying himself.

A really excruciating bit is when he meets on old student friend whose come to the island with his family. The contrast between the lonely loser and the successful family man is unbearable to watch.

Great little film.

Its a film about masculinity. Done in a subtle way.
 
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