What film did you watch last night?

Associate
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17 Jul 2006
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Brawl in Cell Block 99, 8.5/10

Had heard nothing about this, last half hour most exciting bit of film i've seen in a couple of years. Not for the squemish though!
 
Man of Honour
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My youngest wanted to watch the Hobbit... Its starts well, but the charm goes, and the CGI takes over.

The Hobbit
8/10

The Hobbit DOS 6/10

The Hobbit BOFA 3/10

This is pretty much how I felt. First film captures the Fellowship vibe very well, but by the third film you can tell they're stretching the source material very thinly.
 
Soldato
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All the Hobbit films are utter guff. I'd halve those ratings.

I agree with this completely.

A case of milking the old cash cow dry I'm afraid. Take one shortish book and turn it into 3 two hour films where there was only really enough material for one.

Surprise surprise, it's full of characters and scenes that do not exist in the book.

And don't get me started on the awful and silly CGI. Billy connoly cgi'd and riding a pig into battle, legolas running up falling rocks?? Just awful.

These films started off poor and just got worse with each one as the material wore thinner and thinner. Such a shame as I loved the lord of the rings trilogy.
 
Soldato
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29 Mar 2007
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Swindon UK
Fast and The Furious 8 - 6.5/10

It's a good non-stop action movie but let's face it, the title is about the only link between it and the earlier movies. More like XXX meets The Expendables meets the A-Team with a bit of James Bond in the final act.

The original F&TF was about a street racing gang from a sink estate in LA, who used their driving skills to jack lorries and sell the stolen goods to fund their lifestyle, with the cop going undercover a la Point Break to catch them (before going native). The stunts and premise were a bit OTT but not too removed from reality. Now we have a presentation stuffed with Tech-Fi and the homies from the first three films are now all international super-agents. Also seemed to me Vin Diesel taking more of a back seat and Dwayne Johnson is now the lead character. Statham suddenly becomes the good guy despite the last film writing the story backwards to Tokyo Drift and making him the protagonist who killed Han. His action scene on the plane while juggling a baby was pure slapstick.

So put your brain in neutral for 2 hours or so of not much street racing, this actually makes the second and third episodes look good!
 
Soldato
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28 Jan 2011
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47 Meters Down. 8/10

Really good, better than expected, a thriller more than anything, give it a go, as long as your not going swimming on holiday or anything soon :D:D
 
Caporegime
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Adelaide, South Australia
Beyond the Black Rainbow.

It was Burlinski who wrote, 'The realisation of self creates the paradox of other.' At the time he had no way of knowing that 20 years later, this observation would be adopted as the founding principle of Western subtextual postmodern psychology.

Thus we arrive at the premise of Beyond the Black Rainbow, an independent Canadian art house film created by experimental director Panos Cosmatos, on a budget of just $1.1 million.

Cosmatos makes no attempt to conceal his influences, which are clearly visible throughout the film:

* Kubrick
* Russell
* Mann
* Tarkovsky
* Noé
* Giraud
* Frazetta

The retro-geometric-minimalist aesthetic combines fluidly with the bold use of primary colours, invoking architectural imagescapes we all instinctively recognise from the works of the masters.

Likewise the music: urgent, ferrous, and uniquely electronic. Here too, the inspiration is immediately identifiable.

Cosmatos' decision to include only 8 speaking parts in his cast of 12 is as ambitious as it is insightful, delivering an unexpected payoff in the third act.

Optically, the film walks us four decades back to the primal age of cinema, when film was still dominant. The heavier grain of 1970s cellulose produced a visceral texture that cannot be replicated digitally, prompting much speculation about the source of the six vintage reels Cosmatos used for Beyond the Black Rainbow.

From a thematic and sociological perspective, the film is highly recommended. Cosmatos weaves his narrative through a network of interrelated concepts, challenging our oldest and most cherished perceptions of what we too often consider to be concrete.

I rate Beyond the Black Rainbow at 26.64 on the Haglee Scale, which works out as a robust 8/10 on IMDB.
 
Soldato
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15 Aug 2005
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Glasgow
What Happened To Monday - 7/10. Quite enjoyed it even if it was mostly quite predictable. More violent than I had expected though. Worth a watch if you like films with a dystopian theme.
 
Soldato
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18 Oct 2009
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11,175
All the Hobbit films are utter guff. I'd halve those ratings.

Agreed!

I loved LotR, but Jackson and co made a real mess of The Hobbit. BotFA especially, was dire.

Shame Guillermo del Toro dropped out because of the delays. Would have loved to have seen what he would have done with it, even if it were just his visual creativity.
 
Soldato
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1 Jun 2013
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The Dark Tower. While not bad in itself, I felt it had a whole mythos to convey, worlds to describe and explore, but half way in it was "we've got all this stuff to tell you, but no time", and boom, it's all finished and done. It's like if Lord Of The Rings was done in one movie.

Batman v Superman Extended. Yes the Martha thing was silly, yes Jesse Eisenberg was a bit too Jokerish with his twitching and mannerisms, yes the first two acts are a bit slow while they do a lot of exposition and character stuff, yes lots is pinched wholesale from Death of Superman and Dark Knight Returns, but you know what? The wife and I both enjoyed it, and there was very little time when I lost focus or drifted from the story. It felt like the characters and their motivations were as important as the action scenes (which themselves were pretty good once the film got going). That's somewhat unusual in a modern action film, and I appreciated it.
 
Associate
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13 Dec 2005
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1,304
The Believer (2001)
Ryan Gosling

8/10 Brilliant performance by an unknown Gosling. Controversial film about a young Jewish man who develops a fiercely anti-Semitic worldview. It is based on a true story.
 
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