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

[T & P]

Just discovered Bored to Death, an offbeat comedy series about a struggling writer who puts out a classified ad pretending to be a private detective with hilarious consequences. Good cast and episodes are short and sweet so pretty easy to watch. On NowTV.

Yet another decent series I hadn’t even heard of. I wonder how many simply never get shown in the UK...

 

[rubbershoes]

“An indie NZ film maker” lol wut

 

[May Kasahara]

WFH today so took a couple of hours off and watched Mandy. Massive Cage lolz. I enjoyed it.

 

[T & P]

I’d been aware of True Blood for years as so many people have mentioned it but had never got to watch it or had that much urge to.

But we finally gave it a go a couple of weeks ago and damn it, it’s a lot better than any series about vampires has the right to be. A perfect blend of humour, action and drama, and it actually gets better with every passing season. On S6 out of the 7 made, and loving it

 

[Reno]

I’d been aware of True Blood for years as so many people have mentioned it but had never got to watch it or had that much urge to.

But we finally gave it a go a couple of weeks ago and damn it, it’s a lot better than any series about vampires has the right to be. A perfect blend of humour, action and drama, and it actually gets better with every passing season. On S6 out of the 7 made, and loving it

How do you manage to watch so much so fast ?

 

[T & P]

How do you manage to watch so much so fast ?

Come to think of it, it must be a bit longer just out of the sheer number of episodes, but certainly less than a month. We’ve watched at least a couple every weekday and binged it at weekends.

Also, we’ve dramatically increased our viewing of it after NowTV started displaying a message the other day saying they were about to take it off. They were supposed to have switched it off at midnight last night but somehow we can still play them.

 

[Orang Utan]

jeez, i can usually only manage one episode a week, maybe two in one sitting if it's really gripping, but more than that and I don't really take it in

 

[Reno]

I watch one film every evening I'm home or 2 hours of tv episodes when I'm watching a series. On weekends sometimes two films.

 

[Orang Utan]

I watch one film every evening I'm home or 2 hours of tv episodes when I'm watching a series. On weekends sometimes two films.

i can watch more films cos they're over in one go. With TV series, I need to sip at them like a fine wine

 

[T & P]

jeez, i can usually only manage one episode a week, maybe two in one sitting if it's really gripping, but more than that and I don't really take it in

I don’t do it often, but sometimes when we’re really into a series. But it must also be reasonably fast paced, otherwise one a day is the limit and the length of the episodes should ideally be no more than forty minutes (True Blood being the one exception so far).

I absolutely loved Breaking Bad for instance, but couldn’t take more than one a day. On the other hand we watch the two seasons of Cobra Kai (20 episodes) in a mere 4-5 days.

 

[farmerbarleymow]

Forbidden Planet.

 

[Orang Utan]

Forbidden Planet.

And?

 

[freakydave]

I have been watching Game of Thrones haha. I have seen the last episode so many times, if I wasn't here I was watching GoT final season
It is rubbish however many times you watch it.

 

[krtek a houby]

I have been watching Game of Thrones haha. I have seen the last episode so many times, if I wasn't here I was watching GoT final season
It is rubbish however many times you watch it.

So I hear, but we still have the last season to see, since we seen all the rest - might as well get round to it eventually.

Currently watching Sacred Games, season 1. One ep a night, if we not too knackered. Don't get to see too many Indian cop/gangster shows, so it's arresting viewing, in that sense.

 

[weltweit]

Pink Panther when former Chief Inspector Dreyfus escapes from the institute for the criminally insane!

 

[May Kasahara]

Bill and Ted Face the Music. Two very enthusiastic thumbs up, fine holiday fare

 

[Badgers]

Winged Migration

Have also got 'Das Experiment' and 'Lilya 4-ever' plus a load of others from the local charity shop (10x DVD for £1) queued up to watch.

 

[Orang Utan]

Winged Migration

Have also got 'Das Experiment' and 'Lilya 4-ever' plus a load of others from the local charity shop (10x DVD for £1) queued up to watch.

don't watch the latter if you're in a bad mood! It's ace though

 

[Reno]

I recently watched the Russian sci-fi/horror film Sputnik (an okeyish Alien clone) and couldn't figure out where I'd seen the lead actress till it hit me that she was the girl from Lilya 4-ever. Yes, very good that one, but steel yourself.

 

[Reno]

I finished a Cary Grant box set, mostly of some later, minor films of his. The Grass is Greener was the last film I watched from it and its a snooze. A stodgy adaptation of a dated stage farce, both Grant and Robert Mitchum are horribly miscast. Nobody in it talks or behaves even remotely like a recognisable human being. Penny Serenade, a tear jerker from 1941, was the only film from before the late 50s. I enjoyed that a lot but the last scene, there to contrive a happy end after tragedy strikes, is awful by contemporary standards. Indiscreet is the one film in the set which I loved and I've written about it here. Father Goose with Leslie Caron, was better than expected and Operation Petticoat was entertaining enough, despite much dodgy sexism. Grant and Tony Curtis make a good comedy team. Wasn't a fan of That Touch of Mink, his one film with Doris Day, both their characters come across as awful and the two stars are a poor match. Additionally I watched To Catch a Thief, which isn't in that set. The least substantial of Grant's films with Hitchcock, but still fun. Grant is always wonderful to watch though, the ultimate movie star. His ability to connect with an audience makes him like an old friend, very comforting.

Now I've got a 10 film Louis Malle box set lined up, plus I'm going to try and get hold of as many his films as possible, which aren't in the set. My own NFT retrospective, there is nothing like it in Berlin. I've liked most of the films of his I've watched, but I realised how many I haven't seen.

 

[Badgers]

don't watch the latter if you're in a bad mood! It's ace though

Yeah, I saw it 5-10 years ago. Was bleak as I recall but still a brilliant film. Well worth 10p for the dvd.

 

[Reno]

Lift to the Scaffold, first in the Louis Malle box set. I last saw this on the telly as a teenager and I didn't like it much. What was I thinking, this is great ! While I remembered the premise of a man getting stuck in an elevator after committing a murder, I'd forgotten almost everything else. For the first two thirds the subplot of a young couple stealing the murderers car takes up more time than the main plot and I kept wondering where this is going. Then something happens and the pieces of the plot fall into place. The film is probably most famous for its Miles Davis score and for giving Jeanne Moreau her first important role as the murderers girl and the victims wife. A great neo noir with a killer of an ending.

 

[Sue]

Lift to the Scaffold, first in the Louis Malle box set. I last saw this on the telly as a teenager and I didn't like it much. What was I thinking, this is great ! While I remembered the premise of a man getting stuck in an elevator after committing a murder, I'd forgotten almost everything else. For the first two thirds the subplot of a young couple stealing the murderers car takes up more time than the main plot and I kept wondering where this is going. Then something happens and the pieces of the plot fall into place. The film is probably most famous for its Miles Davis score and for giving Jeanne Moreau her first important role as the murderers girl and the victims wife. A great neo noir with a killer of an ending.

View attachment 231141

I've seen quite a few of his films and think this is my favourite. (I'm a sucker for French 40s/50 noir though.) When Jeanne Moreau died, my local cinema did a tribute with this and Diary of a Chambermaid as a double bill.

ETA I also love that Lino Ventura always only seemed to play a gangster or a cop and nothing inbetween. Well apart from Army of Shadows that is.

 

[T & P]

Terminator Dark Fate. Not very good and instantly forgettable, though not as terrible as I thought it was going to be.

But in many ways it felt like The Force Awakens in terms of the shameless fan service and de facto reboot of the original.

Also

Spoiler

I didn’t get the bit about Arnie managing to kill John Connor at the beginning, but Skynet still being defeated in the future. In the original film and also T2 the sole mission was to kill Sarah/ John in the present to prevent humans to win in the future. But now it doesn’t matter anymore? Unless I missed something

 

[redsquirrel]

Lift to the Scaffold, first in the Louis Malle box set. I last saw this on the telly as a teenager and I didn't like it much. What was I thinking, this is great ! While I remembered the premise of a man getting stuck in an elevator after committing a murder, I'd forgotten almost everything else. For the first two thirds the subplot of a young couple stealing the murderers car takes up more time than the main plot and I kept wondering where this is going. Then something happens and the pieces of the plot fall into place. The film is probably most famous for its Miles Davis score and for giving Jeanne Moreau her first important role as the murderers girl and the victims wife. A great neo noir with a killer of an ending.

Top film.

Talk to Her - Continuing re-visiting Almodovar's via MUBI season of his later work. I find it quite hard not to enjoy an Almodovar as they usually hit all the right buttons for me. That said while I did enjoy this one I don't think it is quite in the top draw of his films, the first half is great but the second is a little loose. Still very good though, and I'd forgotten the silent movie sequence which is great.

 

[Reno]

Le Amants/The Lovers (1958), second in my at-home Louis Malle season. I had never seen this but I was aware that it was considered scandalous at the time and it led to an obscenity trial in the US, where the film was condemned as pornography. Having it seen now, I suppose it applied to the non-judgemental treatment of infidelity (it's about an open marriage) and a sex scene, which briefly shows Jeanne Moreau's breast. That at a time when married couples could not be shown in a double bed in Hollywood movies.

This is a "rich bored wife takes a lover" drama. Here our heroine already has a husband and lover as the film starts and then she falls in love with another man. While Moreau's character isn't particularly likeable, Moreau herself is wonderful. This is where she becomes a film star and her character is allowed her a type of agency which would would have come with heavy moralising and probably punishment in a US film. Visually this looks beautiful in widescreen b&w. If it feels a little cliched, then that's because it anticipates many of the conventions which become routine in European art house films of the 60s.

 

[redsquirrel]

The Brand New Testament - missed this at the cinema when it came out so looking forward to seeing it. Concept is that God is a miserable bastard who deliberately sets out to hurt mankind, this is objected to y his daughter Ea so she decides to go to earth and find her own set of apostles after the manner of her brother Jesus. The premise had legs, there are some nice touches and scenes and anything with Catherine Deneuve and Yolande Moreau has something to recommend it, but I don't think the individual parts are pulled together as well as they need to be. Enjoyable enough but also slightly unsatisfying.

 

[Indeliblelink]

led to an obscenity trial in the US, where the film was condemned as pornography.

Famously overturned on appeal after the judge said of considering whether it was pornography or not "I know it when I see it".
Also read somewhere that this is first mainstream film that depicts a woman having an orgasm, although don't expect When Harry Met Sally type theatrics.

 

[Reno]

Zazie dans le Métro (1960). The first time I tried to watch this, I didn't make it all the way through, this is the one Louis Malle film I which a dreaded. This time I made it to the end but while much of it is no doubt inventive and rather nice to look at, I still don't care for the film much. I don't find this type of manic, relentlessly wacky comedy funny or entertaining, the whole thing feels rather mechanical. I now know where Richard Lester got his ideas for his 60s comedies from though. On a plus side, this features the most gorgeous bus I've ever seen.

 

[Sue]

Interested to see what you reckon to Le Feu Follet when you get to it, Reno (not sure if you've seen it before). I found it unrelentingly bleak and depressing. Not one I'd watch again tbh.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Saw this when it came out (mainly for the director) and really liked it. Still did on a rewatch (it's on iPlayer). Loved the bleak greyness of it all. And that look between Mark Strong and Colin Firth at the Christmas party and then again right at the end.