[Fiend]

Jasper I noted Timecrimes from last time...

GOT is very good really. Fuck reading the books (got enough fantasy/sci-fi to wade through without a 1-book-written-per-decade super complex never-ending political fantasy epic), but it's a great series all round. Also Danaerys nom nom nom.

[magpie]

Seven Psychopaths - Brilliant cast, totally daft, very entertaining.

We watched this at the weekend, I wasn't overly impressed considering the amount of big names in it.  It was just ok, I thought.

[crimp]

 

anybody seen the chernobyl diaries or silent house?

The trailers for both are good, but trailers often lie (prometheus being a prime example).

Are they worth a punt in anyone's opinion? (a big Asian horror fan)

[Jaspersharpe]

Haven't seen it but I remember reading a review of Chernobyl Diaries that made it sound like one of the shittest films ever made (probably why I haven't seen it).

[crimp]

I've only seen trailers of em on other dvds.

Film trailers disprove at least one old saying: you can actually gild a turd.

[slackline]

Useful sites for film reviews (and trailers)...

http://www.imdb.com/

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/

[shurt]

Saw the following recently and thought they were all worth a watch:

Take this Waltz
The Sessions
The Hunter

Also rewatched In The Loop. I'd forgotten how good it is. All hail Malcolm Tucker!

[Jaspersharpe]

Horrible Bosses - Very funny. Similar in style to The Hangover but much better imo.

[SA Chris]

Very silly, but very funny. Some great characters.

[lukeyboy]

Horrible Bosses - Very funny. Similar in style to The Hangover but much better imo.

Really?? I couldn't make it to the end, thought it was dreadful. Horses for courses... 

[Jaspersharpe]

Knocked Up - Amusing concept with some genuinely funny moments spoiled by being way too long, trying to be clever / moralistic and having characters who you don't really give a toss about.

[Fiend]

Dredd - main characters were good (suitable Dredd style), city block and cityscape were good. That's all. They could have filled the rest with more exploration of the psychotic baddie, the degeneracy of the city, and the contrast between Dredd's robotic sterness and the freaks he has to deal with, but no, instead it was endless displays of boring death/shooting scenes made worse by pointless slow-motion and cheesy rock soundtrack - the classic MTV-style way to fuck up a potentially decent film.

[slackline]

Thirst directed by Chan-wook Park

Very good vampire movie for people who don't like vampie movies (absolutely no dreamy eyed pasty pin-ups).  On a par with Cronos by Guillermo del Toro

[Obi-Wan is lost...]

Mrs Obi is partial to the odd rom-com (and I admit the better ones can be worth watching,  ) so I record some from time to time to get add a few brownie points. 'Couples Retreat' had sat on the box for months, as heard it was pretty bad. Not many films get a score as bad as 24/100 on IMDB so I thought this I have to see. Suffice to say...it is pretty dire. Not bad in the 'so bad it good' category. Just bad bad.

By far the best thing about it is the location, one review speculated that the cast only signed up as they got to spend a month in this place
http://www.stregisborabora.com/

If your thinking about watching it I recommend just you spend an hour and a half Googling images of this place...
It will be more entertaining. Don't let her get any ideas though, staying there cost between £750 and £8k per night. Bargain.

[Falling Down]

Argo - Watched the (extended cut) DVD last night.  Really good thriller and all the more for it being a true story with the protagonists still alive.  I plan to watch again with the commentary from Tony Mendez, Jimmy Carter and the 'houseguests'.   Nice cinematography and given it's a film about a true story directed by the lead actor who plays a spy pretending to be a director making a film that doesn't exist in which he and others feature using false identities and the where true story was not revealed until the film is made it's all very post-modern.

Jaws - Re done for Blu-Ray.  This just gets better with age.  The remastering has worked a treat.  Schneider, Dreyfuss and Shaw are just awesome.  Turns out John Milius wrote the 'Indianapolis' monologue too, which, come to think of it, isn't much of a suprise.

Lawless - Written by Nick Cave and starring the some of the best of the current crop of actors and actresses.  Bootlegging, moonshine, hillbillies, gangsters.  It's great.

[Falling Down]

In which case it's probably quite fitting; first, entertainment was used to further politics; then politics was used as a form of entertainment.  All very "meta" - give it a few years and Affleck will be kidnapped by one of the Iranian protagonists annoyed at his casting and the cycle will repeat.   Or, it will be revealed that the filming of Argo was cover for Ben to sneak over a border and break into a nuclear facility.

Just read this following my previous post - you got there first (and better) with the Meta thing 

[magpie]

Winter's Bone, really bleak but good, Jennifer Lawrence is excellent in it.
Hitchcock, alright, better than I was expecting it to be and really made me want to watch Psycho.

[Jaspersharpe]

Lawless - Written by Nick Cave and starring the some of the best of the current crop of actors and actresses.  Bootlegging, moonshine, hillbillies, gangsters.  It's great.

Ah good. Thought this looked worth watching.

[moose]

Jaws - Re done for Blu-Ray.  This just gets better with age.  The remastering has worked a treat.  Schneider, Dreyfuss and Shaw are just awesome.  Turns out John Milius wrote the 'Indianapolis' monologue too, which, come to think of it, isn't much of a suprise.

Jaws is fantastic - one of those films whose reputation has unfairly suffered because of bad sequels - odd phenomenon really, like a besmirching turd drifting upstream.  Another comparable example for me is Rocky; re-watched it recently, you forget how seedily downbeat most of it is (Stallone reportedly wrote the script in a single 20 hour stint - and in the original version he throws the fight!).  Isn't  Jaws' tension supposedly because the mechanical shark (Bruce?) kept breaking down so they had to ditch intended action scenes for more suspense?  I've heard filming was a fraught, angry mess - the cast having to spend each night hastily rewriting the following day's script - Roy Scheider was very bitter about the lack of a writing credit.

 "Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into our side, chief. It was comin' back, from the island of Tinian to Laytee, just delivered the bomb. The Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in twelve minutes. Didn't see the first shark for about a half an hour. Tiger. Thirteen footer. You know how you know that when you're in the water, chief? You tell by lookin' from the dorsal to the tail. What we didn't know... was our bomb mission had been so secret, no distress signal had been sent. Huh huh. They didn't even list us overdue for a week. Very first light, chief. The sharks come cruisin'. So we formed ourselves into tight groups. You know it's... kinda like ol' squares in battle like a, you see on a calendar, like the battle of Waterloo. And the idea was, the shark comes to the nearest man and that man, he'd start poundin' and hollerin' and screamin' and sometimes the shark would go away. Sometimes he wouldn't go away. Sometimes that shark, he looks right into you. Right into your eyes. You know the thing about a shark, he's got...lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll's eye. When he comes at ya, doesn't seem to be livin'. Until he bites ya and those black eyes roll over white. And then, ah then you hear that terrible high pitch screamin' and the ocean turns red and spite of all the poundin' and the hollerin' they all come in and rip you to pieces.

Y'know by the end of that first dawn, lost a hundred men! I don't know how many sharks, maybe a thousand! I don't know how many men, they averaged six an hour. On Thursday mornin' chief, I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player, boson's mate. I thought he was asleep, reached over to wake him up. Bobbed up and down in the water, just like a kinda top. Up ended. Well... he'd been bitten in half below the waist. Noon the fifth day, Mr. Hooper, a Lockheed Ventura saw us, he swung in low and he saw us. He's a young pilot, a lot younger than Mr. Hooper, anyway he saw us and come in low. And three hours later a big fat PBY comes down and start to pick us up. You know that was the time I was most frightened? Waitin' for my turn. I'll never put on a lifejacket again. So, eleven hundred men went in the water, three hundred and sixteen men come out, the sharks took the rest, June the 29, 1945. Anyway, we delivered the bomb."

[Fultonius]

Argo - Watched the (extended cut) DVD last night.  Really good thriller and all the more for it being a true story with the protagonists still alive.  I plan to watch again with the commentary from Tony Mendez, Jimmy Carter and the 'houseguests'.   Nice cinematography and given it's a film about a true story directed by the lead actor who plays a spy pretending to be a director making a film that doesn't exist in which he and others feature using false identities and the where true story was not revealed until the film is made it's all very post-modern.

Watched this the other day - agree that it's a good film. Thought the end was a little unrealistic and, after a bit of googling it turns out the end is
quite "stretched" from the truth. The analysis compared it to zero dark thirty which I think we'll watch soon.

Lawless - Written by Nick Cave and starring the some of the best of the current crop of actors and actresses.  Bootlegging, moonshine, hillbillies, gangsters.  It's great.

This one it in our pile of films to watch... maybe even tonight!

[tomtom]

Watched Argo on a flight earlier in the week. Very good film. Loved John Candy and the bald producer/director dude. Afflek just smouldered and bearded his way through the film in a superb way. Reminded me of how Clint says so much with a grunt and sneer...

[Bubba]

Winter's Bone, really bleak but good, Jennifer Lawrence is excellent in it.

I'm a huge fan of this film - I was really pissed that J.L. missed out on the Oscar for it but at least she got one this year!  Bleak indeed but a gritty, gripping film and she is downright superb in it.

[Fultonius]

Watched Argo on a flight earlier in the week. Very good film. Loved John Candy and the bald producer/director dude. Afflek just smouldered and bearded his way through the film in a superb way. Reminded me of how Clint says so much with a grunt and sneer...

I went off Affleck for a long time, he made some poor film choices. However, since he's started directing and acting, he's delivered a couple of much better roles.

[SA Chris]

Watched Argo on a flight earlier in the week. Very good film. Loved John Candy and the bald producer/director dude. Afflek just smouldered and bearded his way through the film in a superb way. Reminded me of how Clint says so much with a grunt and sneer...

I went off Affleck for a long time, he made some poor film choices. However, since he's started directing and acting, he's delivered a couple of much better roles.

"Affleck, you da bomb in Phantoms, yo!"

[Mike Tyson]

I attempted to watch Anna Karenina tonight but failed after 25 minutes. It was beyond dire. Avoid at all costs is the best advice I can offer.