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

[Idris2002]

Two decidedly uncomfortable vintage watches from Talking Pictures:
Friends (1971) deeply DEEPLY unfortunate 'teens in love' drama with OST by Elton John. Basically 'The Blue Lagoon' but set in the south of France. Two unhappy kids (and they are kids - she's 14 he's 15) run off together, "fall in love", scrape a living on the margins and she has a baby. Amazingly, nobody dies. Absolutely A-grade creepy "awakening of a nymphet" style perving over the female lead (17 at the time of filming, but looking much younger, and also voicing sentiments no teenage or pre-teenage girl has ever felt, never mind expressed ... "oh! a baby! I know it's going to happen, isn't it wonderful ... Paul, I just want to take care of you forever" and so on). Utterly sexist bilge. Amazed and a bit disturbed that all copies of this weren't ritually burned and frankly astonished that even Talking Pics dared to air it again. Only worth watching for some incidental shots of what Provence/Camargue used to look like before mass tourism and to hear some nice Provencal / Occitan dialect. Felt like I needed a good wash after.

Wide Boy (1952) surprisingly brutal UK 'film noir' (in quote marks because it's scuzzier, lower-rent and somehow more Britishly mediocre than classic FN) where a low-rent hustler tries to blackmail two posh adulterers. Disaster ensues thanks to his getting hold of a gun (for a tenner!). More interesting for its reflection of growing post-war British classism blimpishness about crime & criminals ("scum like you", "stop asking me about money, it makes you seem cheap", "one of those street lads" etc). There's also a lot of dialogue about "make a move and I'll let you have it!" etc, so perhaps it was riding the Derek Bentley case then in the headlines (but that shooting happened in Oct 1952, so maybe Bentley was quoting from this film when he came to grief?) Some nice character acting (especially the antagonist's career-criminal but rather genteel ageing dad, who sells him the gun...) but really one for the 50s-crime completists.

IIRC, both Bentley and Craig denied that Bentley ever said "let him have it".

Anyway, last night I watched Dirk Bogarde reprise the role of 50s medic Dr. Simon Sparrow, in Doctor at Large. James Robertson Justice returns as Sir Lancelot Spratt, a role he could have done in his sleep.

Having failed his exams for the umpteenth time, the impecunious Donald Sinden is reduced to going to Ireland to get some sort of official medical qualification. This leads to stage Irishry of "chef's kiss" proportions. Oi burst me hole laughing, so I did, begob and begorrah.

 

[rubbershoes]

My tooth was hurting so I wanted something familiar and comforting

I chose Night of the Demon. Classic British horror

 

[Elpenor]

This week: Batman (1989), liquorice Pizza, Patton, A Perfect World, Wayne’s World

Sums me up really, most of them really old Had only seen Wayne’s World before, really enjoyed A Perfect World, it would make a good double bill with Thunderbolt and Lightfoot I think

Batman was incredibly camp in retrospect, Patton impressed me a lot. Liquorice pizza didn’t deliver as much as I’d hoped but I’d probably have wanted to marry Alana too

 

[ATOMIC SUPLEX]

Continuing my exploration into Adam Sandlers extremely poor but inexplicably popular comedy . . . Pixels.
This has got to be one of the worst films I have ever seen. It's like they didn't give a shit from the ground up.
I am confident that even I could have taken a look at the basic building blocks of this film and easily fixed a large proportion of its problems. Then they would just need to insert some jokes (another thing they never bothered to do) and make the action set pieces actually fit into the logic of the film (pixels did set this up in pre action dialogue, but you couldn't actually see it visually in any way shape or form).

There was actually a half decent and quite fun idea in there, but they just couldn't be arsed to make it into a decent film. I honestly think it would only take a days or two to hammer out the main structure / script problems . . . . then just get some actual comedians in. . . . nah fuck it.

 

[magneze]

I bet Little Nicky is worse.

 

[Reno]

Sampo, 1959 Russian-Finnish fantasy epic based on Finnish mythology. This looks gorgeous, full of beautifully rendered special effects, colour cinematography which would do Michael Powell proud and the whole thing moves at a fair clip with one outlandish plot development chasing another. The acting is stiff and declamatory, but that only adds to the folkloric charm of the film. Think The Singing Ringing Tree, just made on a far larger budget, this is what a LOTR movie could have looked like had it been made in the 50s. I now want to watch the director's earlier fantasy film Ilyra Muromets, which features the best looking dragon ever, both films have recently been restored and look amazing.



Ilyra Muroments:

 

[ATOMIC SUPLEX]

I bet Little Nicky is worse.

I actually watched that at the time. It's not great, but it is most definitely far far far far better.
Little Nicky is also slightly refreshing in that it doesn't feature Sandler as straight talking 'everyman' that everyone loves because he is 'great' - despite his actual on screen character traits appearing to be - arsehole, misogynist and a bully).

 

[Chz]

I rather liked Billy Madison and The Wedding Singer. Happy Gilmore was alright. The rest can fuck right off, and that includes that semi-serious gem dealer thing on Netflix which wasn't actually offensively bad but I still had zero interest in or liking of. I had a girlfriend at the time that liked 50 First Dates and damn if that didn't put me right off her.

 

[ATOMIC SUPLEX]

I rather liked Billy Madison and The Wedding Singer. Happy Gilmore was alright. The rest can fuck right off, and that includes that semi-serious gem dealer thing on Netflix which wasn't actually offensively bad but I still had zero interest in or liking of. I had a girlfriend at the time that liked 50 First Dates and damn if that didn't put me right off her.

I liked the wedding singer when I saw it at the time but re-watched it recently and . . . . well I don't think I made it any further than the first half hour. Happy Gilmore I only remember for "You eat little pieces of shit for breakfast?", which to be fair is a great line.

Ideas like 'first 50 dates' are interesting, but it is executed really badly. It should be another film entirely, not a fucking romantic comedy.

 

[May Kasahara]

I, Tonya. Very enjoyable.

 

[manji]

We own this city. Baltimore cop unit goes rogue. Based on real life events. Bought to life by David Simon, Ed Burns and a whole host of the Wire actors and producers. Pretty captivating.

Binged it absolutely brilliant. Corruption in Baltimore is endemic even the Black female mayor ends up in prison. True story.

 

[redsquirrel]

Sampo, 1959 Russian-Finnish fantasy epic based on Finnish mythology. This looks gorgeous, full of beautifully rendered special effects, colour cinematography which would do Michael Powell proud and the whole thing moves at a fair clip with one outlandish plot development chasing another. The acting is stiff and declamatory, but that only adds to the folkloric charm of the film. Think The Singing Ringing Tree, just made on a far larger budget, this is what a LOTR movie could have looked like had it been made in the 50s.

This is on my to watch list and getting a copy from a certain tracker.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Polizeirruf 110: Der scharlachrote Engel - another (early) Dominik Graf episode of the German police series. It's not up with the best of Graf's pieces like Cassandra's Warning or Smoke on the Water, let alone The Invincibles but it is reasonable enough.

Liquid Sky - Worth watching if only because it is difficult to convey what this film has in words. To explain the plot would make it sound like a rubbish B-moive and while it might be the latter it is not the former. There is a definitely vision there and even though it does not really fully come off it is committed to such that the movie is better than the sum of it's parts. Anne Carlisle holds the screen, just as she does in the also intriguing B-moive Perfect Strangers/Blind Alley. Disappointing that she never made it bigger.

 

[T & P]

Continuing my exploration into Adam Sandlers extremely poor but inexplicably popular comedy . . . Pixels.
This has got to be one of the worst films I have ever seen. It's like they didn't give a shit from the ground up.
I am confident that even I could have taken a look at the basic building blocks of this film and easily fixed a large proportion of its problems. Then they would just need to insert some jokes (another thing they never bothered to do) and make the action set pieces actually fit into the logic of the film (pixels did set this up in pre action dialogue, but you couldn't actually see it visually in any way shape or form).

There was actually a half decent and quite fun idea in there, but they just couldn't be arsed to make it into a decent film. I honestly think it would only take a days or two to hammer out the main structure / script problems . . . . then just get some actual comedians in. . . . nah fuck it.

I’ve always found Sandler extraordinarily fucking unfunny, as well as extremely annoying, in just about every comedy film he’s been in. Not only that, but the films he’s involved with are not just crap, but awkward and rudderless. Like the pile of shit the Grown Ups films are.

 

[ATOMIC SUPLEX]

I’ve always found Sandler extraordinarily fucking unfunny, as well as extremely annoying, in just about every comedy film he’s been in. Not only that, but the films he’s involved with are not just crap, but awkward and rudderless. Like the pile of shit the Grown Ups films are.

I know the grown ups films get a lot of shit (and quite rightly) but after watching a load of Sandler flicks all at once, they are perhaps the best of a bad bunch, certainly no worse than most.
I really don't get why he is actually funny though.
I watched a load of SNL he was in to try and find out what shot him to fame . . . and it's even more inexplicable. His characters are just not funny at all on any level, it's really really weird. . . but not funny weird. Just weird how they let him on TV.

 

[Elpenor]

This week

Dirty Harry, A Few Good Men, The Gauntlet, The Hand That Rocks The Cradle

 

[Buddy Bradley]

Just watched Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022) which has been added to Amazon Prime. It's utterly brilliant, insane, surreal and wonderful and everyone should watch it.

 

[trabuquera]

Pebbles (2021) - bleak but dynamic arthouse film made in Tamil Nadu - might sound like a worthy snoozefest ("a young boy follows his violent father through baking desert landscapes as Dad goes on a vendetta rampage") but it's mercifully short (about an hour 20?) and really creatively filmed and plotted/paced. Much more gripping than it sounds. Not a happy story by any means, though. It was on Channel 4 on the small hours (oh the nostalgia! catching weird obscure films on C4 in the middle of the night!) so might be still available online or on More4. Worth it if you're interested in India, in DV, in the Tamil language or Indian cinema.

(disclaimer: it shows some cruelty to rodents which made even me (meat eater and anti-Western-sentimentalist) writhe about a bit)

 

[toffee]

Dragons: Nine Realms

A children's TV show. I used to love children's shows, and haven't watched one in a long time. This one is cute about a boy and a dragon. It's predictable in an ok way considering it's a kid's show. I've watched a couple episodes and will probably watch more.

 

[Nine Bob Note]

Watched the entirety of the Game, a Cold War spy thriller from the BBC in 2014 (available to DL on Sky). Not overwhelmed with the first episode, but I carried on and it's fucking awesome. Certainly, got a bit predictable towards the end, and the main villain may have been straight out of Allo Allo, but I enjoyed the plot, the actors and their recreation of the 70s.

 

[furluxor]

I picked Casualties of War up because it has both Sean Penn and Michael J Fox in it but it was not a fun watch. Some of it is very much of its time (long close-up shots of the character's face with weirdly slowed down background whilst the character has an epiphany/emotional moment) but it's a story that needed to be told and imho wasn't told badly. Painful but necessary. I can still handle these in September but could be hard in the winter months.

 

[Indeliblelink]

State Funeral (2019) - After Stalin died in 1953 extensive footage was shot of his lying in state and funeral with the intension of making a propaganda piece called "The Final Farewell" but when Khrushchev started to be critical of Stalin's legacy the film was canned and the footage was forgotten for decades. The documentary is fascinating if repetitious in places and obviously there's an extra resonance after events in the UK last week.

 

[seventh bullet]

Blockade, his earlier docu without dialogue and music about the Nazi seige of Leningrad, is available too.

 

[inva]

Casting Blossoms to the Sky
Nobuhiko Ôbayashi's haunting, theatrical and poetic 2012 fictionalised documentary using the aftermath of the 2011 earthquake and Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan to excavate the trauma of the Second World War, specifically the 1945 firebombing of Nagaoka. The first part in Ôbayashi's loose trilogy of anti-war films, also the first of his I've seen and I don't know what the others are like but maybe not the easiest introduction - it's long, convoluted, often visually jarring, over-crammed with ideas and at times verges on cheesy, and somehow it all still works though. Once I adjusted to the style I found it really effective. Reminded me a bit of some of what I've seen of Jean-Luc Godard's later work, though a lot more successful.

 

[Reno]

Vesper, French-Lithuanian post-apocalyptic science fiction film about earth after an ecological catastrophe, which humanity tried to avert via genetic enhancements of various organisms. That backfired and now earth is populated by mutated plants, humans and bacteria and left without much that is edible. The film isn't that strong on plot but the world building is wonderful and its two likeable heroines kept me invested. The biomechanical production design is wildly imaginative, recalling a live action Miyazaki film with excursions into Cronenbergian body horror. Made on the fraction of the budget of a Hollywood blockbuster, this is very impressive and its future looks genuinely alien in a way it rarely does in science fiction films.

 

[MBV]

Penultimate episode of Irma Vep created by HBO. Very watchable:

Irma Vep (TV Mini Series 2022) - IMDb

Irma Vep: Created by Olivier Assayas. With Alicia Vikander, Vincent Macaigne, Nora Hamzawi, Antoine Reinartz. Mira is an American movie star disillusioned by her career and recent breakup, who comes to France to star as Irma Vep in a remake of the French silent film classic, "Les Vampires."

www.imdb.com

 

[Reno]

Emily the Criminal is an excellent thriller/character study and among the best films I've seen this year. Aubrey Plaza (always great and this may be her best performance yet) plays a woman in a dead end catering job, whose life is held back by crippling student debt and a previous conviction which prevents her from getting well paid work. A coworker tipps her off about a "job" where she can make $200 an hour, which turns out to involve credit card fraud and life gets a lot more dangerous for Emily. Often tense but also smart about the politics of the labour market and the reasons why people would turn to crime, when life offers them no other opportunities. Maybe the ending is a little too neat, but it's a minor quibble.

Warning about the trailer, it gives away a little too much:

 

[Supine]

Emily the Criminal is an excellent thriller/character study and among the best films I've seen this year. Aubrey Plaza (always great and this may be her best performance yet) plays a woman in a dead end catering job, whose life is held back by crippling student debt and a previous conviction which prevents her from getting well paid work. A coworker tipps her off about a "job" where she can make $200 an hour, which turns out to involve credit card fraud and life gets a lot more dangerous for Emily. Often tense but also smart about the politics of the labour market and the reasons why people would turn to crime, when life offers them no other opportunities. Maybe the ending is a little too neat, but it's a minor quibble.

Warning about the trailer, it gives away a little too much:

Really enjoyed that, thanks for the recommendation.

Aubrey is taking some really interesting roles. I like where her career is going.

 

[Johnny Vodka]

The Bear. A drama TV series. People shouting in a kitchen. 100% boring.

Just started this after reading a 5* review. Couple of episodes in & I'm quite enjoying it.

 

[Buddy Bradley]

Watched the Hellraiser reboot, which while being advertised as a remake of the original source material for the 1987 film is about as far away from the actual plot of it as you can get. Did some clever stuff with the lore though, and production design was pretty good.

 

[Buddy Bradley]

Finally got around to watching Tenet (2020). Felt like the plot was just created as a way to string together a series of impressive set pieces.