Be Excellent To Each Other

Last night I watched '127 HOURS' which is about a man who falls down a hole and gets his arm stuck underneath a rock, but then after a certain amount of time he manages to get his arm unstuck by breaking it in two places and then cutting through it with a cheap Chinese multitool that came free with a Chinese 'flashlight', which is what Americans call a torch.

It is a true story and is reckoned to be the 'actual' true story rather than one of those dodgy 'based on a true story' type affairs, whereby they'd extrapolate the entire film from the starting point of 'once a man had a torch', and they'd make up all the stuck down a hole and chopping his own arm off stuff.

Most of the film is just the man in the hole, but there are flashbacks and hallucinations which flesh out his character, and allow us to RELATE to him and his predicament.

It is directed by Danny Boyle and his usual team, Danny Boyle is the man who made both heroin and the Olympics glamorous and exciting, and paved the way for Ewan McGregor to play a dull faceless Jedi in the sub-standard Star Wars prequels.

Overall I liked this film and the main chap, who is on screen for nearly the entire running time, James Franco (no relation to Francisco Franco who we don't like and would not wish to see in modern cinema), holds the screen very well with what I believe is called PRESENCE.

The cinematography is stunning too with lots of impressive vistas and shots of big canyons, also there is clever and funky editing going on with split screen effects which I liked because it conveys lots of information in a snappy fashion and a short space of time, and allows the total running time to be an agreeably tight 93 minutes.

The film is available on NETFLIX UK and I pressed on FOUR STARS when it had finished but in reality I would rate it as 735/1000 but unfortunately the Netflix rating system is primitive and does not afford this degree of granularity.

Also, did you know that if you press CTRL+SHIFT+ALT+S at the same time, you can force Netflix to use a bitrate of your choice? This is handy when for some mysterious reason it won't stream immediately in HD, despite being set to force HD in the options. I have found this useful.

Thank you for reading this review of '127 HOURS' I hope you have a pleasant day.

The film has a '15' certificate, the people in the film say 'fuck' and 'fucking' quite a lot, and the bit when he chops his arm off is quite icky. On balance I feel that a 15 is appropriate.

Spoilers!

You'll be pleased to learn that Netflix is going to drop star ratings in favour of thumbs up and down very soon

How have I not heard of this, it looks glorious!

Didn't you watch the trailer on my phone at your birthday party?

And if not - why not?

Apparently not!

I am interested in this female John Wick film. Especially since Scarlett shows she can looking realistically stylish kicking ass in, say, Lucy.

Edit: Shame it's actually Charlize.

JASON BOURNE looks old and tired. It was a decent film, quite exciting although I find the more Bourne knows about himself, the less interesting it gets (the Treadstone programme blah blah, recruitment blah shady this and that, I think I forgot some of the blah blah from the other films).

I did enjoy the action and the stunts, it was pretty exciting. There was a point in the middle that seemed to drag a bit. There's still quite a lot of 'jerky-cam' but that doesn't bother me as much as it seems to for others.

Iron Man 2 was on telly on Sat night, I watched the last hour or so. I remember feeling a little puzzled about some of the negative reviews, I thought it was pretty good if a little bit 'throwaway'. The end battle was exciting with the drones but then the main baddy turns up and it fizzles out too quickly which was a bit disappointing.

Last night I watched THE WRESTLER on Netflix.

This is a film I've been intending to watch for years, like, it's so old I downloaded it back in the day and burned it to DVD-R, that's how old it is, (I stopped burning DVDs a fair while ago), and yet for some reason I was never quite in the right mood to watch it. (I think this is understandable considering it's by the same guy who did Requiem For A Dream, which whilst magnificent is not exactly a cheerful affair.)

I do not think THE WRESTLER is as good as Requiem For A Dream, but it's not far off either. A bit like Requiem, it's a pretty slow build to an absolute powerhouse of a closing 20 minutes or so, and I didn't realise just how much THE WRESTLER had grabbed and pinned me until I realised I'd entered a state of near-captivation without noticing it happen.

If you have Netflix (and really, everyone should have Netflix), there is no reason at all not to watch this.

Also gets a 1 on the Craster scale, but they are PATHOS BOOBIES so not necessarily something you're going to crack one out to.

845/1000

Pathos Boobies is the name of my The Cure covers band.

The Wrestler is superb.

Darren Arronofsky is maybe my favourite director, such a shame we never got to see his take on Batman (although the Nolan films we got instead were fantastic).

The Fountain is his masterpiece.

Yeah, never fails to put me in the mood for dancing.

Watched Law Abiding Citizen, followed by Stargate, followed by Gone Girl on Saturday.

Law Abiding Citizen was not what we were expecting it to be, nor was Gone Girl for that matter. Both decent films, although a few plot holes in Gone Girl which means the more you think about it the less it makes sense (I think it's kind of going for that on purpose though)

Stargate was decent enough, but has one single plot hole which is unforgivable

I enjoy re-watching Law Abiding Citizen, but I wish they'd filmed an alternative ending for it

Watched Nocturnal Animals last night, it was ok, pretty looking but I didn't fully get the ending.



Underworld: I don't know, the new one. Fell asleep.

I've also seen Trolls about five times and counting. It's not too bad, though. The morals of it seems to be "you can't trust a hippie" and "survivalist nutcases are right".

I assume by this you mean "the whole film".

Gone Girl was just weird AF.

I read the book on a recommendation of a friend and it's one of the few books that has an ending so contrived and implausible I threw it across the room in rage when I finished it. The film is very faithful to the book and just as annoying. It's the only book I've ever seen that has questions at the end for a book club. Half a dozen examples that are literally admitting the book is contrived and deliberately contentious and inviting people to discuss it at their book clubs!

Oh my Christ, that's fucking horrific.

That's quite a common thing. But yes, highly naff.

It's surprisingly not horrifically awful. It's watchable enough.

I watched Ben Affleck do his best John Wick impersonation in The Accountant. Ben plays an autistic accountant but still manages to have more personality than Keanu. The story is probably the absolute worst nonsense I've seen in quite some time but the Wick-esq action sequences kinda make up for it. Shame the ratio of action to bullshit is skewed far too heavily in favour of bullshit.

30% groovy action so that's the review score. Worth a watch but remember to fast forward the talking.

Keanu can do two roles well, stoic badass and member of Wyld Stallyns.

Anything that requires actual acting ability... Nahh.

American Gods does!

And then I watched Rogue One again. It was much better than at the flicks but, by Christ, those CGI faces were nightmare inducing. Shame about the awful cinema tropes like being saved at the last minute blah blah . Forest Whittaker was also terrible. The lead male fella put in a great performance though.

Still it's got Kevin Couture on the visual effects.

Kevin out of 10.

"Strong your plot armour is!"

Hopefully, the first question would be, "why isn't this book better?"
I haven't bought a hard copy book in a few years other than various manuals. So, though I read American Gods last year, it was on kindle, and I've never seen any book club questions on any kindle book.
And yes, American Gods has a massively over hyped reputation. I don't think it's Gaiman's best book.

I've not read it, but have high hopes for the TV show. It's done by your man Bryan Fuller, and has a hell of a cast.

Worked for Caligula.

Justice League trailer

Me, too.

Assassins Creed is total bollocks.

I was left both bored and upset by it. In retrospect a poor choice given the state of my brain recently.

I quite liked it

You liked Reacher 2.

Films wot I watched:

Split: M N Shallywallyman film's is actually a kinda cool character drama. There's some great performances here. The end is guff though.

Train to Busan: Souty Korean film about a zombie apocalypse. Starts off rather good like any good zombie film should but then tries a bit of comedy like lots of Korean films do. Still, well worth a look in if you're looking for something that's a bit ... wait for it ... brain dead. PAHAHAHAHA.

Brave: A Disney Pixar film I'd never seen. I was surprised how shit it was compared to their other movies. There was just something missing from it and something wrong with the art that wasn't particularly appealing.

The Expendables 3: Too much Stallone. It's shit an' all.

Yes, not as good as the book...

I seem to like a lot of films..

I watched La La Land last night with the missus. If it was just me, I would have turned it off after half an hour. Style over substance doesn't begin to cover it.

BUT!

I'm glad we didn't turn it off as everything after act 1* is really rather good. I went from being confused by the oscar nods to understanding why Emma Stone won. Don't get me wrong, it's pretty lightweight stuff, but I can understand why some people have gone mental for it. I might watch 'Whiplash' now. Same director, y'see.

* after they're 'together'

I loved it - bittersweet, too, which surprised me, given the light and fluffy nature of most of it.

See, I really enjoyed it right from the start.

Yeah, had me hooked right from the opening number.

Whiplash is pretty damned incredible.

Said nobody ever

He's like a human incarnation of the 'ears' section of a Rampant Rabbit.

Whuuuuut? It was aces.

Think about it

I watched that on Saturday, it's been on my list for ages, waiting for an evening when Lady T is out (she thinks these films are stupisd and she's probably right). It was pretty bad, although Ronda Rousey was a good addition (even if her armpits looked a bit... funny) and it was good to see Snipes back in an action movie.

I think the best expendables film was #2, it was silly knockabout fun and of course had Van Damme hamming it up as like a loon. #1 and #3 were a bit shit really.