Be Excellent To Each Other

I watched this tonight, really good 'true' horror film in that the scares come from the psychology of the whole thing, and it gives you characters you really buy into.

That's what I thought.

We watched Locke tonight, really good. Stars Tom Hardy, nobody else on screen, a character study I suppose you would call it. But quite an achievement to make a compelling film where nothing happens except a Welsh bloke talking on the phone.

We watched Jurassic Park 2 last night. I've never seen it before.

It was rubbish.

Jupiter Ascending is fucking awful. A terrible movie with almost no redeeming qualities.

You are dead to me, the vision.

So, judging by early reviews, the new Mad Max film is quite good*

*Fucking Awesome

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/mad_max_fury_road/

I can see me and my mate Chris having a blazing row about whether to watch that or Avengers when we go to the cinema next week.

Went to Avengers last night, too long and too much spectacle, by about the fifth massive big fight bit I was having long blinks.

Mad Max it is then.

are you going to do the thing with the hole in the bottom of the popcorn bucket?

Is this some sort of northern thing so you can bring your own popcorn in or something?

Look how young Bacon and Guttenberg look!

Trying to find some decent sci fi recently so had a go at some less mainstream stuff.

Europa Report was utter tosh. If you've sprung for the cost of the south african guy from Elysium and District 9 at least give him a script to work with, and spend at least a few thousand pounds on the effects. Utter gash.

Last Days On Mars, half way through, seems to be ok but fairly middle of the road horror film that happens to be on mars.

The other day I fancied watching a horror film.

I don't really enjoy scary monster type horrors (not scary), or jumpy horrors (cheap), but wanted either a psychological horror or thriller.

So, i set Russel about with the task of Netflix-ing us up.

he failed miserably, and instead found a film called 'The Mist' (from a Stephen king novella).

It was bad. And though it could have been a 'so bad it's good' way, it was actually so bad that it came all the way back out of so bad it's good and became really bad.

It's Tremors, but mixes giant rubber monsters, some CGI awfulness relatively early on, and then there are some better CGI monsters. But it's awful.

Saving grace is the final scene, because it didn't wimp out, at least.

I 'loved' The Mist. In that it was a excellently tense emotional ride. That super religious woman made me hate a fictional character in a way I didn't know was possible.

I must also disagree with Mimi and thought The Mist was fantastic, slightly dodgy CGI aside.

I believe the story behind it is that Darabont totally refused to compromise on the film or its ending, and therefore had a substantially smaller budget to work with than he was supposed to have, hence the often 'not brilliant' special effects. (It's unfortunate that the first CGI effect is also by far the worst.)

As a film though I felt it was great, with really strong performances across the board, and like a lot of the best horror films, the real threat is humanity to itself.

Absolute gutpunch of an ending too.

Stephen King praised it as well, saying that it's the ending he'd had given the story if he'd have thought of it at the time.

maybe I watched a different version? I didn't think it was an intense emotional ride at all.

There were some good performances: the religious woman, the next door neighbor, a few others, BUT I thought the acting from the main guy (the illustrator dad) was awful. it was so flat and the acting equivalent of painting by numbers.

Also the monsters were rubbish, and the monsters so predictable that i started being able to guess what the 'next' monster was.

Like I said in the other thread, loved the Avengers film

I had hoped to go see Home with the girl, but it didn't work out that way.
We saw it in dutch a few weeks ago and really liked it, would have been nice to see it again in english

The Mist is legit.

The best psychological horror movie is Bug.

Yeah. He's probably the weakest link. Thomas Jane had career surge around that time where he was getting a few juicy roles, but he never really had the chops to maintain his popularity.

To be honest, I was sold on the Mist from the very first shot of the Dad painting Roland from the Dark Tower

I watched a horror fillum! Can I tell you about it?

It's called "It Follows".

Basically it works like this: you get marked somehow by this thing and "It Follows" ("Hah!" - Peter Griffin) you about. It goes at walking speed so it's pretty slow but it's just relentless so you basically live your life waiting for it to turn up and then when it does you drive off for a bit while it tracks you and starts to walk to your new location really slowly. Anyway, It Follows: It Brilliant. Well, I enjoyed it, and I've watched so many films that I have an intolerance to the slightest bullshit these days.

So, yeah, why don't you watch it? WATCH IT. But after Kingsman cause that's better.

This film really stuck with me after I watched it, so I did a bit of reading up on it and then watched it again.

It's soaringly, stunningly brilliant once you truly appreciate the levels it works on.

Further reading here (spoilers, natch, but I got so much more out of the film on the second watch). The Reddit thread in particular is really good.

http://www.reddit.com/r/TrueFilm/commen ... iscussion/

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2 ... adook.html

http://lynncinnamon.com/2014/12/babadoo ... are-grief/

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainmen ... ef/383528/

Oh man, I really want to see the new Mad Max.

http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/mad-ma ... obharvilla

In Summary:

I recently went to see Age of Adalaline and Far From the Madding Crowd

Adaline was lovely lovely sweet fairytale. It's quite short and will fill your heart with joy in that time. Superb subtle performance from Harrison Ford too.

Far From the Madding Crowd - A film which somehow managed to be incredibly boring and engaging at the same time. Something kind of bugged me about it the whole time it was on but I was still interested to find out how things ended up. I felt it really could have used some more passion. Everything felt somehow a little bit too restrained. When I think of how passionate the likes of Orson Wells' Jane Eyre was this just doesn't compare in the slightest. It's quite good but not quite good enough to be really memorable I feel.

Big Game. A first for me, in that I was the only one in the cinema. It's a romp, and so long as you see it as a tongue in cheek fun film, then it's entertaining. But it isn't great - there aren't enough bad guys to give a great sense of peril, for instance. And Jim Broadbent does well as the cooky guy but does prove once again that most actors doing accents (he's ostensibly American) are kidding themselves if they think they sound natural.

But it is feminist propaganda!

http://www.avclub.com/article/mad-men-m ... men-219391

I have to say it looks absolutely fucking brilliant.

Don't care, seriously considering seeing it at the IMAX this weekend...in Russian (cos I'll have to wait for months for them to show it in English, at one showing, at around 1am on a school night).

How's your russian, comrade?

Niet Russian Comrade...but I'm not going for the subtle dialogue and plot but for splosions and mohawks.

A Long Way Down: Lovely. Superb turn by 4 main cast members. Poots is sublime.

Ex Machina is fantastic. Highly recommended. I really liked how the first half presented situations that raised a bunch of questions in my mind, and then the second half addressed all these questions in interesting or intelligent ways. One of the better sci fi movies I've seen in a while. It has shades of Her and Black Mirror.

Do documentaries go in here? Well if not, they do now.

Watched 'Montage of Heck' last night which is a Kurt Cobain film, now you might think that over twenty years since the guy's death, there isn't much new story on this one - and in a lot of ways, you'd be right. There's been so much written and filmed about him over the years that if you've had any interest in it all whatsoever, this won't really tell you anything fundamentally new.

What is new, however, is the absolutely unprecedented access the director had to Kurt's 'material', his diaries, his journals, his audio tapes, family Super-8 footage, photos and videos from every stage of Kurt's life (from baby upwards) through Nirvana's career to just before his death, Kurt and Courtney's home videos, the whole lot. On top of that there are interviews with his mum, dad, sister, stepmum, first girlfriend, Courtney, Krist Novoselic - everyone you could think of. (Although Dave Grohl is a notable omission.)

Also, 'cause it's 'officially licensed' as it were, loads of Nirvana music.

Since Courtney has both approved it and features in it, I was concerned it'd be a bit of a whitewash but no fear of that, warts and all this definitely is - there is no diluting of the darker sides of Kurt's character and his catastrophic drug addiction.

Whether or not it's interesting enough as a film in its own right to recommend I'm not sure, but for me and Mrs Hearthly, Nirvana will always be an incredibly special band, and like they say 'everyone remembers where they were when JFK died', I remember where I was and what I was doing when news of Kurt's death broke. (Although it was very much on the cards of course, it still came as a dreadful upset.)

I remember the first time I heard 'In Utero' (buying the CD as soon as it hit the shelves) and said to a mate at the time words to the effect of, 'I don't think there'll be another Nirvana album, Kurt isn't going to survive'.

This film doesn't change the facts of course, but it does give a uniquely intimate, albeit often rather upsetting, insight in how those facts came to be.

JESUS CHRIST MAD MAX

Mad Max: Fury Road is an unhinged banshee with an Australian accent howling in the key of a redlined turbo charged V12.

I loved it.

Seriously though, imagine being a director with an action movie coming out this year. Just imagine how you'd feel.

Or next year. Or ever.

"No-one makes action films like the '80s any more."

No, because Mad Max. (And Dredd.)

"Reboots of '80s movies are lazy shit cash-ins."

No, because Mad Max.

"In action movies, the women should have no agency and only exist as an ancillary to the hero."

No, because Mad Max.

"Recasting iconic characters in cult films is a terrible idea."

No, because Mad Max.

Basically, go see Mad Max.

Its not all action though. I like how it went quiet for a nanosecond in the middle in case you'd forgotten what quiet was during the previous hour of OH MY SHITTING GOD HOW CAN THEY TOP THAT OH THEY TOPPED IT BUT SURELY THAT'S THE TOP WAIT WHAT JUST HAPPENED FUCK ME SIDEWAYS

Everything that Gaywood just said. Times a million. Because Mad Max.

(although, having never seen any of the earlier movies in the series, I just watched the original this afternoon and boy howdy that was not what I was expecting)

I love that there's no continuity that makes a lick of sense but they still take care to show Max in his leg brace across the three sequels.

Best song on the soundtrack for me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgYnKu8RYAU

What the actual fuck?

I know. I guess I just never got around to it. I've seen bits of 2 and 3, though.

Back to Fury Road... George Miller's wife, Margaret Sixel, was the supervising editor on the movie.
.

May just be the most exciting thing I've ever seen.

My wife was a huge fan so we started watching that, thought it was very good, even though I wouldn't have normally watched it.

I agree with this. The rich inventor guy is a bit one dimensional but the ending is absolutely superb.

Here's the second trailer for Adam Sandler's amazing PIXEEEEE...no, no, I can't do it. It's going to be universally terrible. And would'ya look at that: Dinklage. What's he doing in this? Earning a dollar. Well, that's his God given right I suppose. Judging from the trailer you can pretty much guarantee two plot points: 1) Dinklage dies. He's not in the Donkey Kong fight despite being the Master; 2) Pacman will chase Sandler (as a Ghost) after eating a power pill only to turn back into regular Pacman at the precise point he catches Sandler this Sandler kills him. Let's face it we're not going to the cinema to watch this anyway; Sandler is about as relevant as this film will be to our beloved pastime.

Oh let's just watch the clip...

Excellent new film/s I've watched recently :

Kingsman, Ex Machina

Daft-but-fun new film/s I've watched recently :

Fast & Furiouser 7 (or whatever it's called - good fun - Fast 5 is my fave in the series though)

Middling new film/s I've watched recently :

Chappie (decent enough but has some odd tonal problems - worst film from this director so far but still quite entertaining)

Shit new film/s I've watched recently :

The Lazarus Effect (it's just shit)

Hope my "in-depth" reviewing style is useful....

Which one is Fast 5? The one with the safe? Or the one on Mexico, maybe?

22 Jump Street is baws. There's a funny bit where Ice Cube pretends to be really angry for ten minutes and another funny bit where they go all meta and take the piss out of the entire concept of the film but apart from that it's predictable pish.

Wrong-o. It’s great. The Dora the Explorer joke was great, as was the whole ‘daughter’ bit.

And the rest of it.