Be Excellent To Each Other

Frighteners.

Okay so I've seen it before at the cinema but I was recently Re-watching on HDDVD but was too tired to watch the end and I can't be bothered to plug in my 360 HD drive again..

Escape from L.A.

I was enjoying it quite a lot but then I fell asleep (this is what I get for watching late at night after a hectic day at work). The DVD had to be taken out to play Rock Band and it's just never gone back in.

A Scanner Darkly.

I have tried to watch it 3 or 4 times, but never make it all the way through. It's a bit dull, unfortunately.

Cel-shaded boobs at several points, though.

I regret that it seems a bit of a film to have wasted making it cel-shaded though. In fact, the best part of the film had to be Robert Downey Jr who absolutely overpowered everyone else.

Good god, this was a film I had going in the background while I did other things. It was the only way to get to the end. Loopy and almost impossible to understand.

I have developed a terrible condition that means I fall asleep during the exciting climax of every film I watch. Any action scene at the end of a movie will have me falling asleep. I don't understand it, because it seems to happen all the time now.

Spanish zombie(ish) film: Rec.

No hang on, I managed to watch it all the way through cause it was freakin' brilliant. Just thought I'd take the opportunity to give it a kind mention and hearty recommendation.

That one set it Alcatraz where the man is trying to escape.

Keep on catching it late night on BBC1 but never get past the bit where he starts to make a hole in his cell wall.

The book is similarly hard going. More so, in fact.

The imaginatively titled "Escape from Alcatraz" starring Clint Eastwood? One of my favourite films.


I wouldn't worry about it, the rest isn't particularly exciting. If you want a spoiler:

And takes Nicholas Cage with him.

I've seen most of A Scanner Darkly, I keep missing the start of it whenever it's on telly. I quite like it myself, or at least I quite like the final two thirds.

I once sat down to watch Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas with some of my pals at Uni and was really enjoying it, until one of the housemates prounounced that it was boring and promptly turned it off. I keep meaning to watch it all the way through at some point but have never actually got round to it.

I never finished watching Hero or House of Flying Daggers. Same old story of falling asleep while watching and never returning to them.

I had to watch Scanner Darkly twice to fully understand it and I'm still not 100% sure what Robert Downey Jr's character is up to.

Both of these movies are really quite dull however.

Yeah, Hero was surprisingly dull. Was a bit baffled by the critical adulation. Mainly I felt like slapping everyone around - mutual yet inexplicably unrequited love in martial arts/samurai films = tedium.

Logan's Run.

Tho I do plan to watch the rest of it at some point...

Malc

The Neverending Story.

He's making it worth watching, obv.

Solaris by Andrei Tarkovsky. It's considered a classic and was made under the Soviet communist studio system as a riposte to 2001. I did manage to get to the end after five installments - yes FIVE, count em. I thought for a while that the film was a subliminally brain deadening exercise to suppress the West as I kept falling asleep in the movie and I NEVER fall asleep in films. Dig it out if you can - it's like a 3 hour tranquility video and makes the Soderbergh remake look like an episode of Tom and Jerry in comparison. Five minute static shots of water running over reeds FTW

As an aside, what films have you not "got", not as in not understand, just missed the point or failed to enjoy or thought they were overhyped when you first saw them only to think they are the classics that they were made out to be when you've made the effort to watch them again.

Three off the top of my head are

Unforgiven: Clint, Morgan, Gene, Harris. Fucking AWESOME as AWESOME can be -thought it was boring when I first watched it, but once I understood that it's meant to be a clearing away of the all the "oater" mythology and that life was that hard and brutal during that period of American history it seemed like new film

Out Of Sight. Hyped as a sizzling example of onscreen chemistry, not helped by the fact that I saw it on a shitty rear projector TV the first time, but it failed to make much of an impact. I've since watched it about ten times - it is one of the best directed and shot films I have ever seen - it just oozes atmosphere - the leads are both very good, the rest of the cast are very good and the script is fab.

Terminator 2. I don't "love" this film now, I should say, but I found it overpowering in the cinema when it first came out and it wasn't until I initially saw it on video and then DVD years later that it clicked for the spectacle that it is. I still think the characterisation is irksome though, but then I think that's a characteristic of James Cameron movies - he's not afraid to make principal characters irritating.

Hah I've been meaning to get hold of that. There was a Radio 4 adaptation of it last year and that was excellent, really tense.

One film I watched to the end and then wished I hadn't was "Week End" - 1967, Jean-Luc Godard. OK, I can sort of appreciate it but it's wildly tedious and yet annoying at the same time.

For some reason I also rented this:
"Playtime (1967), shot in 70mm, was the most daring and expensive work of Tati's career; it took him nine years to complete and he was forced to borrow heavily from his own resources to complete the picture. For Playtime, Tati fabricated a set (dubbed 'Tativille') on the outskirts of Paris that emulated an entire modern city. In the film, Tati and a group of American tourists lose themselves in a futuristic glass-and-steel Paris, where only human nature and a few hints of an older France still emerge to breathe life into the city. Narratively, Playtime had even less of a plot than his earlier films, and Tati endeavored to make his characters, including Hulot, almost incidental to his portrayal of a modernist and robotic Paris."
Which I didn't see the end of because I went to sleep, it's 3 hours long and pretty hypnotic. Fairly impressive all the same though.

That's it. Think I've seen the first half three times now!

I've never managed to see all of Full Metal Jacket. Possibly because every time I've gone to watch it has been when it was on telly quite late, but once they get to Vietnam I start to get tired and drift off.

I think I've seen the bootcamp bit 3 times now, although I don't really remember all that much of it.

If Live isn't working by the time I get out of the bath, then this is going on on YOUR recommendation.

Unforgiven is an ace film! (if you like gritty westerns)

Malc

Not in the same way Cloverfield did though film fans, aye, Aye, AYE?

Hope you like(d) it

Same, tragically, for Ghost in the Shell. The last third or so is a dreary, tedious conversation the likes of which aren't often seen outside of a Metal Gear Solid game.