Be Excellent To Each Other

Violent Night. For the first half hour, I thought this could have remained a pitch; I could have read it briefly, had the chuckle the film had given me by then, and moved on. But it kicked in, some of the deaths are spectacular and it justified its existence. I'm with Kermode who said it was exactly what you expect, but it made him laugh. Yup. And there's a magic team in there - 8-10 members, 3 of them peel off, then 8 of them enter a shed and many many more do stuff inside the shed. Disposable. Funny. Worth it.

Avatar: Way of Water is a retread (almost beat for beat) of the original film. But who gives a shit when it looks so purdy in 3D IMAX!? Fuck me it was great. I even gave a shit when they speared a CG whale thing and it don’t even exist.

And then I watched Barbarian.

It’s a fun little horror movie on Disney+. Starts creepy and gets sorta less creepy and a bit wacky right at the end, but it’s never not a good time. Very enjoyable.

Watched the new Guillermo Del Toro Pinocchio. It’s a little long but I REALLY liked it. It has so many levels. It’s dark without being DARK. I did a big cry near the end. It touches so much on death, love, war, and so many other themes without making it something that younger chikdren can’t watch and get something out of. It’s sort of ugly beautiful. Russell did a big cry too.

Yeah we all watched it too. Lovely film. Making of doco is worth a look too.

Oh, is that on Netflix too? I’ll check that out, thanks!

The del Toro Cabinet of Curiosities is a bit rubbish. He's no Alfred Hitchcock.

Glass Onion was garbage, and not even the enjoyable kind. Not helped by keep doing shots-with-orchestral-music that harked back to 70s Bond - way to kill what immersion you'd managed numbnuts. Disappoint, the first was great.

Violent Night is very silly and pretty good fun so far

We started to watch this last night but I fell ill so have the second half still to watch, but I was loving what we did see.

The second half is better, even if it did make me wince in a few bits.

Haha, yes, we just watched tve second half and there were a couple of bits where I had to look away

Coma is pretty great. We've watched quite a lot of non-english things recently, not even all Korean, as is this case, and been pleasantly surprised.

Chaos Walking or whatever it is the Tom Holland/Daisy Ridley one is called is an alright way to pass a couple of hours too.

Glass Onion was superb.

I loved it.

Just watched it too, excellent. Although...



Which somehow makes it lesser, and I'm not sure it should.

I gave up on it very quickly.

ftfm.

I thoroughly enjoyed White Noise, however.

Finally caught up with this. It was oddly funny and I think it will stay with me quite a while.

It covers depression quite well.

WHAT HAS GRIM... WATCHED THIS YEAR?
The Menu - super-pretention restaurant that you can't leave before the "experience" ends. Excellent.
Easy A - High school girl lies about being slutty (thirteen years ago), gets (sort-of) popular, hijinks ensue. Also excellent.
Boss Level - Tripped over this on Amazon Prime and as I like time loop films I thought I'd give it a go despite it's utterly stupid name and it's really fucking good! It's not going to tax your brain, but it's funny and action-packed and people die over and over again. Hurrah!
The World's Fastest Indian - I'm back up to date with this one as it's only 18 years old, but it's about an old man who builds his own high-speed bike out of back-yard parts and tries to break the world speed record. It's great.
Titanic - It's about a hot girl on a big boat. It's old now, it's really long, and it's still one of the best films ever made.

I watched a film.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.

I really didn’t like it at all. I didn’t like the direction (reminded me of that shit Marvel film with that big cast. Fuck me, what was that called. Y’know, the one about gods or some bollocks.), I hated the copious amounts of slow motion, the CG wasn’t bad per se but there were several scenes where it’s clear they’re just standing on a green screen (there’s a few scenes where the background isn’t even moving and they just look awful); also the CG was somehow “different” to previous marvel films that took me out of the movie cause I’m noticing these things (it’s all a bit shiny and glossy, despite looking more realistic); and, the worst offender… it’s fucking boring.

Y’know what other film about blue people wasn’t? Avatar 2. I watched that twice. I could barely keep my hands off my phone with this.

Avatar 2 was incredibly dull and at least 90 minutes too long. It was also exactly the same as the first film but in water instead of trees.

It was, however, stunning.

What Cras said, although I thought it was okay and stunning, rather than dull.

There were times when BP2 felt like a prequel to A2..

I watched a really shit film called Apex.

The premise made it sound a bit like the Running Man, a film I am very fond of, and the same for the short story too: A criminal in an area being hunted, but this time the hunters are rich people who have paid to be part of the game.

It was shit, and the way the hunter characters behaved didn't seem to make much sense. Bruce Willis mostly just walked around looking old and resting, in no way was he believable as some ultra tough killer.

The only two bits I thought were any good were the goofy face used for Bruce's profile picture, and the goofy music for the bit when he was strolling through the woods eating some berries.

It also seemed very low budget and the two leads made very little effort.

I also watched Ambulance, or 'ambuLAnce' as it is styled, because it's set in Los Angeles of course, so clever and cool and stylish.

It made me feel nauseated at times, the constant hyperactive camera work and the quick cuts, holy shit.... the quick cuts. A conversation between 2 characters had the camera spinning around them, jumping to a close up, then spinning, then a close up, it was choppy and messy. Then, in another shot the camera zooms up the street as the cars are chasing, then up the outside of a building, then it turns and zooms back down to street level and turns to catch back up with the car chase, it was like a roller coaster but yucky.

It was also patently ridiculous. I wouldn't recommend it.

Sir Taxalot. Watching all the shit films so we don’t have to. Well done, Sir!

On the subject of shit films The Postcard Killings on Prime is well worth a look. It's so, so bad. We both spontaneously burst out laughing when the protagonist (a bereaved father and fish out of water maverick US American detective in Europe, played by Negan from Walking Dead) came out with "those are my daughter's haaaands". If someone said that the whole thing had been conceived, written and directed by some kind of machine learning algorithm then I would have believed them. So stilted, and not really a single line of dialogue that sounds like anything a human being might actually say.

As I was making those posts, I thought the same thing - it does seem like I've watched a lot of naff films. Part of that might be because we get fed up after a lot of scrolling and indecision and just go 'sod it, that'll do'

This weekend, the kids chose School of Rock as the family film. I saw the beginning, then skipped the middle as I was making pizza for dinner, and then caught the end. It seemed like a decent film but I could pretty much see exactly where it was going. I'm still not sure if I find Jack Black funny or annoying - maybe it's both.

He's pretty good in massively overlooked film The Holiday and I just realised I didn't watch it this winter so that's what ruined Christmas

I forgot that we also watched The Gentlemen. It was pretty good, Matthew McConaughey and Charlie Hunnam were really good in it. From the trailer on netflix, I was expecting more of Colin Farrell's character than I actually got, which was a shame as he was cool.

Hugh Grant's 'tough speak' was jarring and awkwardly unnatural, and I thought he sounded a bit like my uncle (who is a little bit of a twat). The same for the posh lady from Downton Abbey talking like LAHNDON INNIT SWEETY

I always get the feeling that Guy Ritchie films are trying too hard to be cool and edgy, a bit more convoluted than needs be, it feels a bit forced. When the film 'relaxes' a bit and seems less 'forced', it's good. Overall a solid film.

I watched 'The House That Dripped Blood' (again) on Amazon last night as it popped up on the discovery queue. I love an Amicus horror anthology...and this is definitely is one.

Worth the price of admission solely for Pertwee as a vampire.

...and the goofy, definitely not scary faces he pulls while being one.

If you think that applies to Snatch you and I are going to throw down.

Not sure I've seen Snatch, did that come right after Lock, Stock?

(snigger)

Yes. And it's superb.

"Do you know what Nemesis means?"

I watched a film!

Of Fathers and Sons (Netflix)

It’s a documentary about a jihadist military household (minus the mothers who can be heard but weirdly are never seen). It’s fascinating and ultimately tragic. The dad is a minesweeper and altogether horrible piece of shit. When he came hobbling in from setting off a mine, I felt some justice was done. The kids are shipped off to jihad school and have AKs shot between their 12 year old legs and within inches of their faces because, well, nothing says jihad like causing your soldiers hearing loss the week they turn up. I just felt absolutely nothing for these scumbags and wanted them all to die. Now or later, I didn’t care. What a bizarre night. It felt horrible to experience.

But the strangest thing was, I was reading about it online afterwards and they all say it’s 90 mins long but it’s only 55 minutes on Netflix. And I couldn’t find anyone pointing this out or discussing it. Maybe IMDb is wrong. Dunno.

I watched a film!

Knock on the Door (I think I’ve got that right, I can’t be arsed to check) (The Em Knight Shally Man film).

I missed his film about the aging beach for some reason so I was interested to see how he’s been progressing over the years. Turns out, he’s doing alright. It was pretty good I guess at building tension, the actors did a really great job and got you wondering what was going to happen next.

There’s a few moments where you’ll probably go “you wouldn’t do that in that situation” but the film moves along so briskly there’s not a lot of time to moan about those bits.

Plus, it really felt like the gore was needed to be seen to really make you fear for the main characters but after the first death it’s all muted and off screen which I thought at the time made me less worried as to what was going to happen.

Plus the twist



gave me The Happening vibes.

I think it’s worth watching and it was definitely entertaining but ultimately I don’t think it’ll stick with me.

In your face Snappa! I watched We Have a Ghost and it was good.

Not great, but good, it was quite nice and in a way sweet - like a family adventure film. I'm not sure it's suitable for small kids as there's one bit when the special effects go a bit gory but it's very brief.

There was a slightly useless side plot that added a bit of artificial tension but not much else.... Oh, and at one point I paused the movie to use the toilet and (separately) go get a drink, and was surprised that there was still an hour of viewing time left, because I really thought it was close to resolution. It didn't feel long as such, but maybe could have been edited a bit shorter perhaps.

Overall, I enjoyed it and would recommend.

People Just Do Nothing - fantastic TV show that I've watched and rewatched, but the movie was a little flat and uninspired. By no means bad but sadly it just didn't quite work.

very much a show that didn't need a movie. Though I generally say that about most TV comedy.