Last film you watched?

[Mr Owl PhD]

I think Project Nim is quite a good documentary, and it's kind of interesting even if it was a scientific and ethical failure. You're right that some of the people in the film really don't come out of it very well though.

[kirsten]

It was interesting, but I think I maybe watched it in the wrong mood. I decided pretty early on that I wasn't enjoying it and I stubbornly stuck to that.

I think Stephanie was possibly the most strange. She seemed really unrepentant about anything and also petty and bitter about the fact that another woman essentially replaced her, despite it being several decades later.

[The Milner]

2012 - 2 and a half hours of utter, utter pish, i want those 2 and a half hours back please.

[maud 'dib]

Immortals.

It was really fucking stupid, but really good. Mind you, I think 300 is one of the greatest films ever barring Spartacus and Jaws. I'm quite easily pleased. I wish they would make 300 II. Got Sherlock Holmes Game of Shadows all ready to go now.

I wanted to be a smartarse and write 300 squared but I jist can't figure out how to make that sneaky wee 2 appear. Bugger it.

[Stroopy121]

Avengers Assemble

Unghhh... *blat*. If you don't love this film, it's because you've went in wanting to dislike it. Perfect superhero movie. And I'm pleased to say that Mark Ruffalo was brilliant as Bruce Banner - I expected him to pale in comparison to Ed Norton but he really did a great job with the character.

10/10

Super

I expected this to be somewhere between the Green Hornet and Kick-Ass but IMHO it's better than both (and I fucking loved Kick-Ass!). Rainn Wilson is a fantastic anti-hero and Ellen Paige (who I previously disliked greatly) was fantastic as the trying-too-hard, lovable loser sidekick. Kevin Bacon is also fantastic, even though whenever I see him all I can picture is:

I expected it to be fairly PG bar the odd sweary word, having not read anything about it in advance, but it's also one of the most hilariously violent films I've ever seen.

..and I was so fucking happy when Bolty got her head blown off... And when Frank stabs Kevin Bacon to death at the end. They completely sidestepped two of the biggest movie cliches. Brilliant ending.

10/10

xx

[Mr Owl PhD]

Headhunters: Splendidly entertaining Norwegian thriller about an art thief who takes on one last job that doesn't go as well as expected. One of the most entertaining films I've seen for a while - a sort of Norwegian Cohen Brothers film with lots of dark humour (and the plot reminded me a bit of No Country for Old Men, although it's played for laughs a bit more). Will get made into some inferior Hollywood version but try to watch the original.

[maud 'dib]

I watched this film with nazi zombies on the ski slopes. was dead good. nae idea what it was called, dead nazi snow or summat. was pretty guid. nae a patch on DUNE though.

I'll watch anything with Nazi's...I sat through the Keep right to the end. dead hardcore me. innit.

I also likes red wine and roll ups.

just sayin'.

[Alkaline]

I watched this film with nazi zombies on the ski slopes. was dead good. nae idea what it was called, dead nazi snow or summat. was pretty guid. nae a patch on DUNE though.

I'll watch anything with Nazi's...I sat through the Keep right to the end. dead hardcore me. innit.

I also likes red wine and roll ups.

just sayin'.

Dead Snow, keep meaning to watch that. It looks so shit it is probably awesome.

[Lemonade]

Piranha 3D - Tits! Blood! Eli Roth! More tits! More blood! Christopher Lloyd! More tits! More blood! Richard Dreyfuss!

****

[paime]

Piranha 3D - Tits! Blood! Eli Roth! More tits! More blood! Christopher Lloyd! More tits! More blood! Richard Dreyfuss!

****

I was so happy when my other half said she wanted to see this - roll on the boob-fest!!

The Lincoln Lawyer

I've seen this once before but didn't really get into it. I watched it again last night and I quite liked it - some decent twists and a good plot. My only criticism is Matthew MacConaughey's ridiculous "im such a cool guy" attitude that he seems to inflict on all of his movies. William Macy even falls into his trap and acts like the all American Mr Awesome - im sure that sort of behaviour keeps a US audience happy but i don't think it translates well to the rest of the world. I would like to have seen Ed Norton or someone similar in the lead role to give it more substance.

[Guest Bob Knob]

I thought Threads was depressing to watch but...

[Moose]

I really enjoyed The Avengers the other day. I expected it to be shit, but it was a perfect super hero film. A perfect balance of great action; very mature, smelly cheese; and comedy. There are a few genuine laugh out loud bits.

They did really well to fit all those characters into it as well. Normally when too many heroes are in the same film, it all goes to shit (Spiderman 3, any X-men film), but they did really well to split the screen time between the protagonists. However, Iron Man/Tony Stark is obviously the coolest by miles.

I don't generally like super hero films, but was pleasantly surprised by this.

8/10

[Monster Zero]

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

The Hollywood remake. As a big fan of the original I was initially a tad peeved to hear a Hollywood remake was following so soon but I perked up a bit at news of David Fincher directing, even though I didn’t think much of ‘Zodiac’. And still haven’t got round to ‘Benjamin Button’. Anyway, it seemed the sort of story he could do a decent job on and largely he did. Rooney Mara is a great Lisbeth and Daniel Craig is pretty good as well but I think on the whole I prefer the original movie, which seems to have a better pace to it, this one feels a lot slower moving and the intricacies of the plot feel more skirted around.

8/10

Melancholia

Lars Von Trier’s less-batshit follow up to ‘Antichrist’. In the first segment of the film, Kirsten Dunst gets married at the fancy golf club owned by her brother-in-law (Kiefer Sutherland) but spends most of the wedding having a bath, shagging a guest in a bunker and other shenanigans. Although new hubby (Alexander Skarsgaard) seems besotted and indifferent to her behaviour on the whole, the next morning he announces it’s game over. The next section of the film then concentrates more on her sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and the rogue planet Melancholia which is on collision course with Earth. Kirsten floats about the place and gets naked in the woods under the glow of Melancholia, Kiefer disappears and not that much happens really. Decent enough for a single watch but I punted it on Amazon after, no re-watch value for me personally.

7/10

Blitz

Jason Statham plays a rough and ready copper who becomes embroiled in a hunt for a cop killer. Paddy Considine plays his gay superior. Not that bad movie but riddled with cliché, the ex-drug addict cop falling back into old habits after a traumatic experience, the mentor figure being killed, etc.

7/10

[Monster Zero]

The Beaver

Mad Mel Gibson as a failing family man and business owner in the midst of a bad spell of depression who finds a beaver hand puppet in a trash bin and ends up getting out of his slump by communicating via the puppet in a Michael Caine accent. Quite an odd film but I quite enjoyed it.

7/10

Michael Clayton

George Clooney plays a fixer for a law firm who is called in when one of their top lawyers goes batshit while on a case and he gets caught up in a bit of a conspiracy. Also pretty good.

7/10

Fancied watching the Rambo quadrilogy...starring Sly Stallone in case anyone is mental and hasn't seen them...

First Blood

The one when John Rambo goes to visit a Nam buddy beside Portland and gets hassled by the local policemen, breaks out of jail and goes on the run in the woods with the police in pursuit. Best one.

9/10

Rambo: First Blood Part 2

The one when Rambo goes on a mission to Nam to try and locate American POW's left behind and falls foul of nasty Russian commander Steven Berkoff. And kills a fair heap of folk. With a pretty impressive curly mullet.

8/10

Rambo III

The one when Rambo goes to Afghanistan to rescue Col. Trautman when he gets captured by nasty Russian played by som ebloke who looks a bit like George Galloway. And kills a fair heap of folk. With an out of control curly mullet.

7/10

Rambo

Surprisingly decent belated 4th one when Rambo looks a bit like he is made of Playdoh and grudgingly takes a group of missionaries into Burma and then goes to help a team of mercenaries find out what happened to them when communication is lost. And kills a huge amount of folk in insanely graphic fashion. Hair a bit like that cut that ageing rockers like Bon Jovi get.

9/10

[girl anachronism]

The Raid:

Low-budget Indonesian action film. Elite team of 20 cops try to arrest a crime overlord who resides at the top of a thirty-storey skyscraper in a run-down and notorious part of Jakarta along with an army of ruthless criminals and killers.

If I'd known the above, I'd probably not have bothered; there's minimal dialogue, a paper-thin plot, virtually zero character development and a couple of daft and glaringly obvious twists. Not my thing at all.

BUT... I thought this film was pretty great. As you may suspect, the 5-0 do not have it easy and what ensues is a hugely intense, thrilling and enthralling struggle for survival and escape. It's the sheer desperation and intensity that makes this film- with the protaganists having to abandon traditional strategy and weapons and utilise the hostile surroundings and any resources within during their vital and primal struggle. This is accentuated quite cleverly with use of set, lights and sound :

There's one point during a brutal melee where one of the cops gets shot in the ear and for the subsequent few minutes, there's a horribly uncomfortable ringing sound, the sort you hear when you get hit in the ear with a football, and muffled voices and sounds which was particularly absorbing and effective.

Some of the longer one-on-one fight scenes later in the film went on a bit too long for my liking- I'm sure the martial arts were technically amazing, but I much preferred the sheer chaos the cops encountered on the lower floors during their ascent.

Intense, energetic and violent without being too gratuitous. The best action film I've seen in a long time, and I generally dislike action films. Which probably invalidates everything I've just said.

Points off for Mike Shinoda doing the soundtrack. Stan Bush would have been a much more sensible choice...

7/10

[Lemonade]

Avengers Assemble

Unghhh... *blat*. If you don't love this film, it's because you've went in wanting to dislike it. Perfect superhero movie. And I'm pleased to say that Mark Ruffalo was brilliant as Bruce Banner - I expected him to pale in comparison to Ed Norton but he really did a great job with the character.

10/10

Disagree with you on this one good sir. It was good, but not a perfect superhero film. Too much space / alien / other worldly mumbo jumbo. Not enough scenes of good old fashioned ass kicking. Keep your sci-fi jazz out of my superhero films. Also, too much style, not enough substance I thought. It looked amazing but they didn't really do as much with the characters as they could have done. None of the characters really have much of a storyline arc to speak of. Nothing really happens to any of them, no lessons learned, no struggles overcome, with the exception of possibly the Hulk. At its most basic its essentially a film about a group of people who show up, do their job and leave. I thought Joss Whedon would have done more with this, he's so good at writing and developing characters but at times they were little more than props hidden amongst all the big CGI set pieces. The end fight was pretty epic just to see them all fighting together but I was a little bit bored by the time it actually happened.

***

[Jaaakkkeee]

Disagree with you on this one good sir. It was good, but not a perfect superhero film. Too much space / alien / other worldly mumbo jumbo. Not enough scenes of good old fashioned ass kicking. Keep your sci-fi jazz out of my superhero films. Also, too much style, not enough substance I thought. It looked amazing but they didn't really do as much with the characters as they could have done. None of the characters really have much of a storyline arc to speak of. Nothing really happens to any of them, no lessons learned, no struggles overcome, with the exception of possibly the Hulk. At its most basic its essentially a film about a group of people who show up, do their job and leave. I thought Joss Whedon would have done more with this, he's so good at writing and developing characters but at times they were little more than props hidden amongst all the big CGI set pieces. The end fight was pretty epic just to see them all fighting together but I was a little bit bored by the time it actually happened.

***

All the movies running up to it delt with the personal shit. This was about them coming together and kicking ass. You already know what you need to about the Avengers, so of course they had to spend some good time with the space / alien / other worldly mumbo jumbo.

Ass for the lack of ass kicking, they just had to show the bit with Hulk and Thor's bro once and I would have been happy. Funniest action scene in a movie ever.

Also, I hope you watched passed the credits. Shit's gonna go down, down town, next time.

*****

Also watched Transformers 2 recently. Not as good as the first one. And the first one isn't my all time favourite film. Good "shit exploding and big robots fighting" film though.

***1/2

[Moose]

Disagree with you on this one good sir. It was good, but not a perfect superhero film. Too much space / alien / other worldly mumbo jumbo. Not enough scenes of good old fashioned ass kicking. Keep your sci-fi jazz out of my superhero films. Also, too much style, not enough substance I thought. It looked amazing but they didn't really do as much with the characters as they could have done. None of the characters really have much of a storyline arc to speak of. Nothing really happens to any of them, no lessons learned, no struggles overcome, with the exception of possibly the Hulk. At its most basic its essentially a film about a group of people who show up, do their job and leave. I thought Joss Whedon would have done more with this, he's so good at writing and developing characters but at times they were little more than props hidden amongst all the big CGI set pieces. The end fight was pretty epic just to see them all fighting together but I was a little bit bored by the time it actually happened.

***

And what superhero films do you like, eh? The fact they fitted 7 or 8 main characters in it and still made it work makes it a far greater achievement than any Spiderman or Fantastic 4 bollocks that's been about. It's a great superhero film because it doesn't take itself seriously either. Plenty of lols.

[Stroopy121]

Disagree with you on this one good sir. It was good, but not a perfect superhero film. Too much space / alien / other worldly mumbo jumbo. Not enough scenes of good old fashioned ass kicking. Keep your sci-fi jazz out of my superhero films. Also, too much style, not enough substance I thought. It looked amazing but they didn't really do as much with the characters as they could have done. None of the characters really have much of a storyline arc to speak of. Nothing really happens to any of them, no lessons learned, no struggles overcome, with the exception of possibly the Hulk. At its most basic its essentially a film about a group of people who show up, do their job and leave. I thought Joss Whedon would have done more with this, he's so good at writing and developing characters but at times they were little more than props hidden amongst all the big CGI set pieces. The end fight was pretty epic just to see them all fighting together but I was a little bit bored by the time it actually happened.

***

See I re-watched the film the other day with father-in-law and although I didn't spend the whole time with my jaw on the floor as I did the first, I still say it's pretty near perfect. For central character conflicts you didn't as much have any internal battles but the conflicts between characters and clashing personalities. Having so many protagonists in a film essentially meant that they could have given one, maybe two of them an in-depth, character driven plot which would basically just render the whole film another story around Cap, or Hulk, or whoever got that story.

By not trying to do too much with it, they did just enough. Look at Spider-Man 3 as an example. They had Venom, Sandman and Hobgoblin all in there, and tried to give them ALL fully developed stories and it just came out as a clusterfuck. I do agree that more fight scenes might have been cool but there are a fucking few of them scattered through it:

Loki turning up and kicking some ass

Cap/Iron Man fighting Loki in Germany

Iron Man vs Thor

Hawkeye assaulting the heli-carrier which included:

Banner Hulking out

Loki's escape

Iron Man and Cap saving the ship

Then there's the final battle which was epic.

The other strong hand they played was that they didn't try to shoe-horn in a bad guy (unless you count the little snippet after the credits where they reveal...

that Red Skull was alive and behind the whole thing).

I see where you're coming from that it's a little bit plot-less action without enough ACTION in there, but I think the fight scenes in it were all fucking brilliant. Best of all, they were 'believable'. There weren't many of those irritating moments where a scene drags on past it's reasonable conclusion which IMHO kill so many of those films.

xx

[Diesel]

Recent viewage...

Suspect Zero

Weird thriller starring Sir Ben Kingsley, Aaron Eckhart & Carrie-Anne Moss, about a demoted FBI agent who's on the trail of a serial killer who appears to be targetting other serial killers. Obscure and frustrating to follow at first, but develops nicely as it progresses. Worth looking up. 7/10

The Uninvited

Slightly predictable psychological thriller about a girl returning home from a mental institution after the violent death of her mother. Stars David Strathairn, Elizabeth Banks and thon wee pixie from Lemony Snicket and Sucker Punch. 6/10

A Perfect Getaway

(It was thriller/killer week at Casa Diesel). Enjoyable black comedy about a honeymoon couple on a Hawiian island where another murderous couple are seemingly on the rampage. Some twists and turns and dark humour. With Timothy Olyphant, Milla Jovovich and Steve Zahn. 7/10

Zodiac

Superior based-on-fact drama about the Zodiac killings of the late 60's early 70's, starring Jake Gyllenhal and Mark Ruffalo. 8/10

Untraceable

Could almost be classed as the thinking person's "Saw". A nutcase in Portland, Oregon, is kidnapping seemingly random people and hooking them up to devices that will eventually kill them when his untraceable website "www.killwithme.com" gets enough hits. An FBI cyber crimes team, led by Diana Lane, race against the clock to stop him. You have to suspend your disbelief quite a bit, especially if. like me, you know absolutely everything about IT - but it's much better that the rather silly plot suggests. 8/10

Gone

Lame thriller with bug-eyed Amanda Seyfried (who, to be fair, is finally growing into her looks) as traumatised girl who allegedly escaped from serial killer, but can't get anyone to believe her. Also set in Portland, Oregon. 4/10

The Troll Hunter

A team of documentary makers follow a seria....actually there no serial killers in this one, only giant trolls. You just have to love those wacky Norwegians, if they're not letting shape-shifting aliens loose in the Antarctic , they're out there bothering trolls. Some pretty impressive FX in this one. As mad as a box of snakes. 8/10

John Carter

Exactly the same as Avatar, only green with a wee bit red, instead of blue with a dod of green. Silly, but entertaining. 6/10

[Moose]

See I re-watched the film the other day with father-in-law and although I didn't spend the whole time with my jaw on the floor as I did the first, I still say it's pretty near perfect. For central character conflicts you didn't as much have any internal battles but the conflicts between characters and clashing personalities. Having so many protagonists in a film essentially meant that they could have given one, maybe two of them an in-depth, character driven plot which would basically just render the whole film another story around Cap, or Hulk, or whoever got that story.

By not trying to do too much with it, they did just enough. Look at Spider-Man 3 as an example. They had Venom, Sandman and Hobgoblin all in there, and tried to give them ALL fully developed stories and it just came out as a clusterfuck. I do agree that more fight scenes might have been cool but there are a fucking few of them scattered through it:

Loki turning up and kicking some ass

Cap/Iron Man fighting Loki in Germany

Iron Man vs Thor

Hawkeye assaulting the heli-carrier which included:

Banner Hulking out

Loki's escape

Iron Man and Cap saving the ship

Then there's the final battle which was epic.

The other strong hand they played was that they didn't try to shoe-horn in a bad guy (unless you count the little snippet after the credits where they reveal...

that Red Skull was alive and behind the whole thing).

I see where you're coming from that it's a little bit plot-less action without enough ACTION in there, but I think the fight scenes in it were all fucking brilliant. Best of all, they were 'believable'. There weren't many of those irritating moments where a scene drags on past it's reasonable conclusion which IMHO kill so many of those films.

xx

While I agree with all of this: it aint Red Skull, it's Thanos.

[Stroopy121]

That...er.. was a typo?

My bad.

xx

[Jaaakkkeee]

Stroopy, I thought it was him too. But then I was like "how the hell did he get to space?" Then I googled who it really was.

[Moose]

I know who both of those characters are, but I had no idea who it was when I saw the film. Googled it when I got home.

[Lemonade]

Stroopy, I thought it was him too. But then I was like "how the hell did he get to space?" Then I googled who it really was.

I thought it was:

Hellboy

even though that didn't make a lick of sense.