Films you've seen recently and would recommend WITH reservations

rubberdingyrapids said:

civil war is pretty cool. some good stuff in there. but its all a bit hazy. a film about war photographers but not that much depth on that. a film about a civil war but not much really on the politics. gets intense near the end, but up til then its a bit of a slow/intermittent burn with some truly weird music choices that i am assuming are meant to be irreverent but just come off tone deaf. alex garland can obviously direct, but not sure he can write, or think as well. a bit like a more conceptually ambitious edgar wright.

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saw this in the cinema last night and have enjoyed it as well. i have a weak spot for road movies with all its obligatory scenes such as getting gas at the deserted gas station and dealing with all the weirdos. i agree with you that the music was a bit off at times, especially the de la soul track that started right after that very intense and bloody shoot out was a strange choice. it made the film a bit cartoonish.

Escape from San Quention 1957 a prison noir with a good actor in the form of Richard Devon, recognise him from somewhere else, almost gave up on YouTube films though due to ads.

Corpsey said:

That's one of my fave films too. Oh and he's in Interstellar, the best film of the 21st century.

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Wait, hang on! I thought Gone Girl was?

DLaurent said:

Escape from San Quention 1957 a prison noir with a good actor in the form of Richard Devon, recognise him from somewhere else, almost gave up on YouTube films though due to ads.

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ad blocker sorts this with no downside that i can see.

Ah yeah, I thought it had stopped working so I disabled it a few months back, but it seems to work fine, cheers.

Late Night With The Devil - I enjoyed it a lot. I thought it was a genuinely original idea, pretty much a play (or could be) with virtually all the action taking place in a single room - the TV studio for a Letterman style show called Nightowls Are Not What They Seem - and the bits outside of it could easily be dispensed wirh if required.

So ultra-low budget with even the bloke playing the main guy being unknown to me, minimal fx until the end and so on. It kept me watching and interested and i genuinely enjoyed the tacky 70s talkshow feel. So why the reservation? Well, for a film that is nominally a horror it's just not very scary, which is an issue right?

Also i should say, at the start it begins with one of the longest voice-over narration exposition type things I've ever heard. Watching that it seemed to me that someone had heard the phrase "show don't tell" and just gone fuck it. I mean it's so far in the opposite direction that it feels deliberate, I almost felt I had to respect the idea of breaking one of the most fundamental rules of cinema so extremely right as the very first thing that happens in the film.

nb one of the characters is based on The Amazing Randi (though much more of a wanker as far as I can tell) who has been discussed on here I'm sure and was a pretty interesting guy I'd say.

The Man With My Face 1951.

It's not the most cohesive film, they haven't manage to execute the brilliant idea that well, but it has some scenes that are very smart and will have you wondering what you're watching.

the beast, with lea seydoux. id watch LS in pretty much anything, though she does have the sad/weary expression of tired/depressed mum after the school run trying to make dinner quite a lot of the time, and i was half in the mood for an arty brainy sci-fi but then i fell asleep a lot and the film was then getting on my nerves everytime i woke up so had to give up and left 30 mins before it ended. but from what i did see, it was trying to do A LOT, skipping from one thing/idea/period to the next in half-interesting, half-self satisfied fashion, and for a film about the importance of emotions, it was very unemotional. the incel bit seemed interesting (are there any good films on incels?) so i should watch it properly/awake obv. only film from this director i liked though was noctarama, which was also very controlled, cerebral, cold, but that was at least tightly edited and had a stronger narrative.

rubberdingyrapids said:

(are there any good films on incels?)

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Taxi Driver.

version said:

Taxi Driver.

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flipping robert de niro he is so crap isnt it
i saw flower moons and it was a nice enough film except that dickhead and his side kick leo, gurning and ugly crying, acting his little heart out but completely failing to transcend his hollywoodness and so you know that even if he had been brutally bumped off,
he will still reappear in another film in under 6 months, what's the point

i spose at least leo has s different hairdo and attempts to scrunch his fat face in a different way for each film, de niro lacks even that limited range

I like both of them.

i like both. was a period where i thought dicaprio looked too young for everything but i liked him in wolf of wall st and killers of the flower moon to my surprise. love deniro. taxi driver is an interesting one though, more for how keitel looks miscast and unconvncing as a pimp. but deniro is great in there and well, lots of films. deniro was a bit ropey in the irishman, but thats more to do with the uninteresting, indulgent script. pacino was on fire in that one though so it didnt matter. i know taxi driver is a popular proto incel movie, but then that would go for every film about loners wouldnt it?

rubberdingyrapids said:

i know taxi driver is a popular proto incel movie, but then that would go for every film about loners wouldnt it?

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Taxi Driver follows the archetypal incel trajectory more closely than a film just about a loner. He's odd, isolated and socially awkward, spirals after a clumsy courtship with Cybill Shepherd, then resorts to more or less aimless violence.

That being said, a crucial point of difference is the presence of the Vietnam war: Travis is a veteran.

this sounds like it could have been interesting... though manodrome sounds a bit crap as a title. unless it really does a 'videodrome for the 2020s' which it prob doesnt.

I watched this film The Offence with Sesn Connery as a Police who goes off the rails interviewing a suspected paedo... it's directed by Lumet so it feels that is should be more well known but I guess it bombed. I think the story is that Connery made it a condition of doing one more bond film that he be allowed to shoot some grim and gritty film with him playing against type so he could escape from being Bond forever.

Well the film is certainly dark and dirty and makes 70s UK look like hell on earth, which it pretty much was I suppose. Anyway people say it's an undiscovered gem which seems a bit too strong for me. Yeah it's kinda interesting and has some weird and nasty flashbacks that break up the realism - it's Lumet after all - but apart from that it's very clearly a play with three long talkie scenes cut up by some minor joining scenes. And ultimately despite the reviews saying "it's not at all stagey" it was kinda stages parts and really I didn't quite buy the whole thing.

It's a curio, it's worth checking but ultimately I didn't quite find it the masterpiece that all the reviews would have you believe.

In retrospect I think Leo in killers of the flower moon is one of his best though it didn’t bowl me over immediately. He’s oddly good at playing wormy, pathetic pieces of shit.

I started watching it (killers moon) but 9nly managed 30 mins. Feels like I've seen it all before. I was watching yellowstone at same time which I think is a lot better. The yellowstone show runner is an interesting guy I think