Movie/film thread: resurrected

Just not a true fan of horror I guess. Speaking of which....


West Side Story (1961)

Wanted to see why switchblades got banned. Got distracted by the teeth.


West Side Story - Dance at the Gym

"Murder on the Orient Express"; I was a bit disappointed. Perhaps it is just me.

Fire Walk With Me (1992) (Remastered)

Did you have to have seen Twin Peaks first? To recognise how iconic Dale Cooper is, maybe. But he's barely in the movie. The movie is all Laura. ALL Laura. To love or hate Laura is to love or hate the movie. Anyway, 25 years ago, Laura told Agent Cooper "I'll see you again in twenty-five years," and the revival/reboot season 3 of Twin Peaks will start showing in 2017... so I watched the 1990 pilot, and I watched the 1991 finale (plus the two penultimate episodes), and I watched the movie, Fire Walk With Me. Twenty five years ago I did watch all of Twin Peaks too. Could the movie stand on it's own? I have no idea.


 

Watched this again. As a psychological horror odyssey with Laura at the center, it remains aces. (Sheryl Lee probably makes it - another actress might not have.) And just as the original Twin Peaks had a focus - the murder investigation - FWWM has a focus - Laura. And the ring exists in FWWM. A lot of things make a little more sense in Twin Peaks season 3 because of FWWM, and vice versa. I'm baffled that this movie should have been considered a failure, but I do remember that it was. I recall reading reviews saying it was an embarrassment to Lynch and a disappointment to fans. People are dumb.

Anti-Matter (2017)

Has no antimatter.

Physics postgrads accidentally invent a localisable wormhole technology and with an alarmingly antiscientific abandon proceed to make it big enough for a person to go through. One of them does go through. The trial is a success. But then she's losing time, she gets attacked, and her friends are keeping secrets.

Rapid-fire philosophical and intellectual horror (with really bad ADR at the beginning and a terribly wooden male supporting actor all the way through).


 

The Future of the ‘Alien’ Series Involves Fewer Aliens, Says Ridley Scott

If you watched Alien: Covenant earlier this year and thought, “Huh, director Ridley Scott really doesn’t seem all that interested in the aliens in this Alien movie,” well…it seems like you were right. While Covenant was a box office disappointment, the legendary filmmaker still intends to make another movie in the franchise and it certainly sounds like he’s going to double down on not caring all that much about the creature that supplies these movies with their titles.

Scott has been busy reshooting swaths of his new movie, All the Money in the World, replacing disgraced star Kevin Spacey with Christopher Plummer. And he’s also planning to shoot his adaptation of Don Winslow’s The Cartel next year. And he’s also taking time to talk about the next Alien movie with Entertainment Weekly. May you be so busy when you’re 80 years old.

Anyway, Scott says that the key to the series’ longevity will be replacing the drooling, acid-blooded alien with a different kind of monster – artificial intelligence. Here’s his reasoning:

We are [going to make another], we are. I think what we have to do is gradually drift away from the alien stuff. People say, ‘You need more alien, you need more face pulling, need more chest bursting,’ so I put a lot of that in Covenant and it fitted nicely. But I think if you go again you need to start finding another solution that’s more interesting. I think AI is becoming much more dangerous and therefore more interesting.

/pffft

Bright (2017)

Urban fantasy. The world is run by Elves. The Dark Lord may be returning. And Will Smith and some Orc are LA police. They find a magic wand.

Really bad reviews. But you know... yes, the witty one liners are not quite right all the time, and the buddy movie formula doesn't entirely sit too well in the fantasy setting, and the whole thing would have been better if they'd gone properly grimdark, but it's a lot of fun anyway. Definitely more shallow than it needed to be if it wanted to be great, but the ideas and the setting are kinda cool. I could see it as a pretty nifty tv show. Hard to tell if Will Smith makes this movie or he brings too much Bad Boys baggage with him.


 

Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

aka Blade Runner, 2 hours and 43 minutes. It's damn long. But good, I thought. A great deal of the "good" is the visuals. It's a very compelling film to look at. I got lost after the second hour though. Han Solo showed up and I didn't quite know what was going on anymore. Would watch again though. I think maybe the cyberpunk/slave horror themes are a bit too muted. They're there but really dialed back, like maybe no one knows what to say about a slave rebellion anymore.


 

White Christmas (1954)

Bing Crosby foments US insurrection. A classic.


 

Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971)

Psychedelic. The original blaxploitation movie.


 


Sweetback's Theme - Earth, Wind & Fire

Star Wars Episode 8: The Last Jedi

Did seem a little like a remake of some major parts of Episodes 5 and 6.  Not as bad as some complain about.  Not as good as some gush over.

There were complaints about the Porgs.  Personally, I liked them.  I thought they looked very tasty.

Coffy (1973)

Blaxploitation. Nurse "Coffy" Coffin (Pam Grier) seeks revenge for her younger sister's drug addiction. Better than Foxy Brown.


 

The Continent - 后会无期 - (2014)

Chinese road movie, written and directed by Han Han. Episodic rather than filmic, and kind of inconclusive, but genuinely funny.


 

Mountains May Depart  - 山河故人 - (2015)

A Jia Zhangke movie thus remarkable at capturing essential Chinese silences - follows the life of Tao from young womanhood in 1999, through marriage in 2014, and into the aftermath in the next generation in 2025 (!!!) - an excellent, ambitious movie, maybe especially with the weird and uncomfortable way it ends.


 

Don't Think I've Forgotten: Cambodia's Lost Rock & Roll (2015)

Details the growth in the sixties and what is known of the later destruction under the Khmer Rouge of the people who made Cambodia's pop and rock. Described as a meticulous and unsparing reckoning, I found this doco unsettling for the alarming sentimental streak it displays, which I found to be at odds with the meticulous and unsparing streak it does also display. It's an odd conjunction. But valuable to consider. And I guess apt as well.


 

Don't Think I've Forgotten: Cambodia's Lost Rock & Roll (2015)

Details the growth in the sixties and what is known of the later destruction under the Khmer Rouge of the people who made Cambodia's pop and rock. Described as a meticulous and unsparing reckoning, I found this doco unsettling for the alarming sentimental streak it displays, which I found to be at odds with the meticulous and unsparing streak it does also display. It's an odd conjunction. But valuable to consider. And I guess apt as well.


 

I enjoyed that one..... while you're at it, you should most defintely check out "In the shadows of Motown"..... a great little piece about arguably the most unsung heroes of modern music.