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

[inva]

Giants and Toys
1958 satire directed by Yasuzo Masumura. In post war Japan three rival confectionary companies try to out compete each other in promotional campaigns and corporate espionage. Searching for a way to gain the upper hand, an ambitious executive and his assistant discover a working class girl on the street who they aim to transform into advertising mascot. Collectively, the characters are all caught in the collision between a nepotistic and rigidly heirarchical corporate culture and the tidal wave of consumer capitalism, and the new freedoms after the end of the militarist regime and the US occupation have proven hollow.

The satire is too heavy handed (at one point advertising slogans are chanted over a political demonstration) and misanthropic to really be funny, and it's less biting and more a blunt instrument but the bludgeoning effect of the lurid cluttered visual style and the distorted chaotic sound is effective in its own way. Ultimately probably more interesting than entertaining and very of its time, the bleakly fatalistic final scene is the highlight.

 

[inva]

Minari
2020 drama written and directed by Lee Isaac Chung about a Korean family in the US who move to Arkansas in the 1980s to start a farm and face many challenges from each other as well as their new life. Features strong performances throughout, some lovely shots of rural landscapes, and hits just about the right emotional balance for a film like this with some welcome humour here and there. Not anything groundbreaking but well crafted and observed.

 

[belboid]

Another Round (Druk)

The Danish oscar winner with Mads Mikkleson as one of a group of depressed teachers who show us the inherent risks of undertaking a psychology experiment without proper clinical supervision. A couple of 'really???' points aside (getting really pissed can be fun! Who knew?) excellent stuff with a superb ending.


Inherent Vice

Hadn't seen it since the cinema, so I unwrapped my dvd and stuck it in. I very quickly remembered the issue with the film. It's not that the plot is massively complicated, it is quite complex but not ridiculously so, it's that you can barely hear the fuckers as they mumble along in a stoned drawl. At least the pigs enunciated. Which is a real shame cos once you have got to grips with what s going on and have tuned your ear in, its great. Another complete Robert Altman homage, but why the hell not? Cracking soundtrack too.

 

[surreybrowncap]

Minari
2020 drama written and directed by Lee Isaac Chung about a Korean family in the US who move to Arkansas in the 1980s to start a farm and face many challenges from each other as well as their new life. Features strong performances throughout, some lovely shots of rural landscapes, and hits just about the right emotional balance for a film like this with some welcome humour here and there. Not anything groundbreaking but well crafted and observed.

Yeah - agree. Saw this last year. Good natural performances especially from the kids.

 

[miss direct]

Finished Stay Close. Silly but enjoyable.

 

[Elpenor]

Curb your enthusiasm series 7

 

[inva]

Yeah - agree. Saw this last year. Good natural performances especially from the kids.

Yeah really impressed by them

 

[T & P]

Save the Cinema. The kind of bland vanilla feelgood film that you know your elderly mother will love when you sit down with her in front of the telly of a Sunday afternoon.

It’s a good film within that genre to be fair, and easy watching and light. Just don’t spend money to watch it, or expect anything great.

Anyways, I like Tom Felton aka Malfoy and it’s good to see him play a goodie for once. I’d be interested to hear from any Welsh Urbanites how did he do with his Welsh accent impersonation though.

 

[platinumsage]

Anyways, I like Tom Felton aka Malfoy and it’s good to see him play a goodie for once. I’d be interested to hear from any Welsh Urbanites how did he do with his Welsh accent impersonation though.

Just saw the trailer and Felton doesn’t speak enough in it to tell, but judging by some of the other accents his can’t possibly be the worst.

 

[T & P]

Just saw the trailer and Felton doesn’t speak enough in it to tell, but judging by some of the other accents his can’t possibly be the worst.

Being a non-native English speaker and generally shit with accents, I’ve never been any good at telling good accents from bad ones in films. I mean, they have to be genuinely awful for me to say ‘yeah, that was a shit rendition’

 

[T & P]

Big thumbs up for Tag, a 2015 Japanese film that’s probably best described as part grindhouse, part arthouse, with a dash of comedy horror and sci-fi thrown in.

Original as fuck, clever, and highly enjoyable overall. A word to the wise: there are a few gratuitous and pervy knicker-flashing shots, but as it turns out there is a justification for that after all, and this is not that kind of film, so don’t be put off by it.

Anyways, highly recommended. Behind the Shudder paywall on Amazon Prime, sadly.

Tag (2015) | Rotten Tomatoes

A woman is cast adrift into an increasingly bizarre set of alternate realities in which each scenario ends in bloody carnage.

www.rottentomatoes.com

 

[krtek a houby]

On season 3 of Seinfeld, and a bizarre ep that don't recall from original watch. After the usual standup, the episode starts off with a shot of a Trump plane, and later Jerry and George fall in with neo-nazis. Obviously, a co-incidence... or a sly dig at the tycoon?

Anyway, darker than usual.

Six Feet Under's Peter Krause guests.

 

[Reno]

I'm 8 episodes into Yellowjackets. It's a great showcase for its lead actresses (especially Melanie Lynskey) but I'm getting a little impatient for them to get to the people munching. It's good but not as good as I was hoping.

 

[cybershot]

Copshop. Once you get past the first act (and we almost turned it off) it's actually pretty good. Criminal gets banged up, so he can try and kill another criminal also locked up.

 

[inva]

One of Our Aircraft is Missing
1942 Powell & Pressburger classic, far from their best still great stuff though.

 

[T & P]

Grave Encounters. A found footage horror film about a reality TV ghost hunting show filming their next episode at an abandoned mental asylum where questionable medical procedures were said to have taken place.

Pretty good, actually.

 

[Elpenor]

I'm 8 episodes into Yellowjackets. It's a great showcase for its lead actresses (especially Melanie Lynskey) but I'm getting a little impatient for them to get to the people munching. It's good but not as good as I was hoping.

Is that about the soccer team who go missing?

 

[Reno]

Is that about the soccer team who go missing?

Yup

 

[T & P]

ATOMIC SUPLEX & Reno (plenty of other film aficionados on these boards I could have named, but you have to stop somewhere), just wondering if you’ve ever watched the Japanese film Tag I mentioned a few posts up?

Not the greatest thing since sliced bread, but still pretty good, and one of the most memorable and original films I’ve watched in a while. Certainly deserving of a higher profile than it currently seems to have, which seems to be next to zero.

 

[Reno]

ATOMIC SUPLEX & Reno (plenty of other film aficionados on these boards I could have named, but you have to stop somewhere), just wondering if you’ve ever watched the Japanese film Tag I mentioned a few posts up?

Not the greatest thing since sliced bread, but still pretty good, and one of the most memorable and original films I’ve watched in a while. Certainly deserving of a higher profile than it currently seems to have, which seems to be next to zero.

I have seen a couple of Sion Sono films and they were distinctive but not enough on my wavelength to make them a priority. It's on my list of at least 1000 potentially interesting films to watch.

 

[ATOMIC SUPLEX]

ATOMIC SUPLEX & Reno (plenty of other film aficionados on these boards I could have named, but you have to stop somewhere), just wondering if you’ve ever watched the Japanese film Tag I mentioned a few posts up?

Not the greatest thing since sliced bread, but still pretty good, and one of the most memorable and original films I’ve watched in a while. Certainly deserving of a higher profile than it currently seems to have, which seems to be next to zero.

I have seen tag. It's great up until a point. I find the reveal to be utterly unimaginative compared to the quite wild and imaginative scenes and ideas leading up to it.
I would still recommend it. It's interesting, and even though better than most, it is a quite standard Japanese straight to video shock shlock. If you like this try some older Miike Takashi titles like Izo, or Gozu

 

[Reno]

I finished Yellowjackets and maybe the hype set up unrealistic expectations, but I thought it was merely ok. It's one of those shows which tease out their revelations over several seasons and I was left unsatisfied by season 1. The first scene of the first episode features a flash forward to rather disturbing events which never happen in this season. It also set up the expectations for a far darker show, but this is often surprisingly comedic and lightweight.

Maybe it didn't help that I watched Station Eleven just before, a better genre show which uses jumping around within a two decade time frame for more than setting up mysteries to be solved. Station Eleven uses that device for a more profound effect. I thought Yellowjackets would be more my bag as it promised a horror infused show, while I couldn't imagine a post apocalyptic show with thespians instead of zombies or mutants, but I was wrong there.

 

[Chz]

The Great Beauty
Apparently won Best Foreign at the Oscars that year, but the competition couldn't have been up to much. I suspect there's a good film somewhere in there, if at least a half hour was taken off the 140 minute running time. And I mean at least. There are some LOL moments, some excellent shots, but it doesn't add up to anything at all and just comes off as so much pretentious wank. Yes, it's "about" (insomuch as it's about anything at all) people who are pretentious wankers, but it doesn't excuse the film being so up its own arse.

 

[inva]

Cash on Demand
Low budget, stagey but taut and really nicely put together 1961 Hammer heist film directed by Quentin Lawrence. Peter Cushing's nervy, fastidious bank manager is coerced into helping André Morell's self-assured upper class bank robber loot the contents of the vault. There's a great dynamic between Cushing and Morell as, in roughly real time, the power relations in the film shift dramatically and the petty manager who lords it over his employees is usurped and humiliated. The supporting cast is good too, though I thought their characters weren't really developed enough to make the ending work so well. Turns out its a Christmas film which I'll have to remember, and well worth its short running time.

 

[platinumsage]

I finished Yellowjackets and maybe the hype set up unrealistic expectations, but I thought it was merely ok. It's one of those shows which tease out their revelations over several seasons and I was left unsatisfied by season 1. The first scene of the first episode features a flash forward to rather disturbing events which never happen in this season. It also set up the expectations for a far darker show, but this is often surprisingly comedic and lightweight.

Maybe it didn't help that I watched Station Eleven just before, a better genre show which uses jumping around within a two decade time frame for more than setting up mysteries to be solved. Station Eleven uses that device for a more profound effect. I thought Yellowjackets would be more my bag as it promised a horror infused show, while I couldn't imagine a post apocalyptic show with thespians instead of zombies or mutants, but I was wrong there.

I wasn’t aware of any hype or what genre it was supposed to be, but thought it told its story quite well. Somehow I had assumed it was a limited series with no more seasons, so the final episode not leading back to that early scene was a bit of a surprise.

 

[platinumsage]

The Gilded Age - Downton Abbey set in 1883 New York for an American audience Everyone kept saying all their lines, it was pretty relentless. No wit or humour either so I probably won't bother with any more episodes.

 

[Reno]

I wasn’t aware of any hype or what genre it was supposed to be, but thought it told its story quite well. Somehow I had assumed it was a limited series with no more seasons, so the final episode not leading back to that early scene was a bit of a surprise.

It became a word of mouth success and on social media was probably the most discussed new drama series. I noticed that there was a lot of enthusiasm by the middle of the series and then very little discussion of the ending, which I found to be a real letdown. This looks like one of those series which will be endlessly strung out, with too little plot development or pay offs parceled out. I’d been promised cannibal schoolgirls and what I got was Desperate Housewives meets Lost.

 

[krtek a houby]

It became a word of mouth success and on social media was probably the most discussed new drama series. I noticed that there was a lot of enthusiasm by the middle of the series and then very little discussion of the ending, which I found to be a real letdown. This looks like one of those series which will be endlessly strung out, with too little plot development or pay offs parceled out. I’d been promised cannibal schoolgirls and what I got was Desperate Housewives meets Lost.

Sounds great!

 

[Reno]

Sounds great!

There is a lot to like about the series, mainly the performances by the lead actresses. However I am the type of spectator who sits there every episode going "when are they going to eat each other ?" when that's what has been promised during the first few minutes of the show. Now I'll have to wait another year for the people-munching to start and who knows, maybe they drag it out even further.

 

[May Kasahara]

Finally watched Get Out. It was very good.