Films II : The Filminator

[Maryokutai]

I'm not sure if live action is the right way to go for this IP. You'd have to rework all of the recognisable designs and costumes to the point where I wonder why they wouldn't just go with an animated movie like Mario. Then they could keep most of the established look and style without it feeling laughable or out of place.

 

I also wonder if they portray Link as a mute or not. I'd certainly approve if they did.

 

So, yeah, not optimistic, but at least intrigued.

[DANGERMAN]

Hyrule Kingdom here we come! 

 

 

It'll probably be less boring than the games I guess, but then the Mario film was pretty irritating. Animal Crossing is still the best Nintendo film I think, it's weirdly adult themed (not in that way) 

[OCH]

24 minutes ago, DANGERMAN said:

Animal Crossing is still the best Nintendo film I think, it's weirdly adult themed (not in that way) 

 

Personally I think there are too many live action contemporaries. A Zelda film should have been animated. No CG either. I wonder how "Zelda" it will be? IE Cyclical curses leading to manifest destiny etc Or low brow and superficial nostalgia-bait? Cynically, I think the latter.

[DANGERMAN]

I watched Five Nights at Freddys last night. It's not that bad. I've no idea really how close the story is to the lore of the games, but there's definitely a few nods to the gameplay. It tells a decent background story for the main characters, it's well acted, but there's just not a lot going on, it's certainly not as intense as the original game was 

[one-armed dwarf]

Don't know if Swan still wants japanese film recommendations, but I watched Roshomon (1950) and Throne of Blood (1957), both by Akira Kurosawa. Roshomon I got on blu ray to add to my slowly accruing collection, Throne of Blood watched via VPN on criterion channel*. They did a bunch of 4k UHDs of Kurosawa's films in Japan over the past year so I hope we get some of them over here soon.

 

Roshomon left me a bit cold, but I really liked Throne of Blood. It's Kurosawa doing Shakespeare, Macbeth to be exact. Some slight deviations from the source that make the film more interesting, and it's visually excellent with the scenes of the forest moving in (one of the source deviations). They had to film near Mount Fuji apparently so that the fog looked just right. It's an easy recommendation. Same actor playing the lead role in both these films as well

 

Have ordered the UHD of Ran and Dreams to watch for another time, Ran is King Lear. Dunno anything about Dreams but both of them are later career Kurosawa when he started filming in colour

 

* you could probably get it on the bfi player and avoid that awkwardness maybe, they region block us here as well

[mmmark]

SAW X is the best of a bad lot since the first and there’s not much more to say about it. 7/10.

[mfnick]

John Wick 4

 

Dont know why I waited so long to see this. Absolutely bloody love the JW films. & this was predictably excellent.
 

After 1 viewing and immediate thoughts are it’s potentially the weakest one though. Just far too much reliance on invincible Kevlar suits for my liking. In the previous films there were more set pieces relying on cover or pre-planning. This was more simple run forward with your arm over your head. Prefer it when the bad guys don’t have it too and they just fucked up immediately. Them having it felt a lot rarer in the previous films too. 
 

Still, I had a really great time with it. The Arc de Triomphe and Hotline Miami style overhead kill rooms scenes were particularly great. That part on the stairs at the end got a laugh out of me too even though it was ridiculously stupid. 

 

[one-armed dwarf]

Using my criterion channel sub, I watched The Piano Teacher (2001) - A Haneke film about a very repressed and sexually dysfunctional piano teacher with sado-masochist tendencies. The description of the film sets a very different expectation to what I got, tho at the same time extreme discomfort and disgust is what you should expect with Haneke. 

 

Then some other time I watched Benny's Video (1992) - Features the main actor from Funny Games, and has a horrible opening scene. This motherfucker. The actual film got interesting beyond that tho. It's about how people will find unthinkable ways to repress and compartmentalise an unthinkably awful event in their lives. Also voyeurism, cause it's a Haneke film init

 

I still struggle with enjoying this dude's films but in this case I think that's the intended effect. None of them have been as good as Hidden for me yet

 

Next thing I want to get into is Bergman. I watched Summer with Monika (1953) on bluray and it looked excellent. Also a nice palette cleanser from the above...

[OCH]

Thanksgiving

Oh this was fun. Exactly the kind of film that cheers me up during a bad illness bout - a nice, gory Slasher. One that doesn't lean too far into humour. Not a perfect film but enjoyable enough for me. Nice to see them make a real film out of one of those Grindhouse "trailers" from Death Proof.  7/10

[one-armed dwarf]

Looks like the reboot series of Scream is imploding. The main actress (Melissa Barrera) made some comments about the Israel-Palestine war and got sacked. Jenna Ortega looks to have left also

 

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/melissa-barrera-fired-scream-vii-1235669458/

 

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/jenna-ortega-quits-scream-vii-1235675434/

[Nag]

Watched Violent Night... Lives up to it's name, David Harbour plays Santa Claws who beats the shit out of a group of Mercenaries who are holding a family hostage. I enjoyed it a lot and it even has some sentimental Christmas spirit to go along with the violence.🎅

[OCH]

5 hours ago, Nag said:

I enjoyed it a lot and it even has some sentimental Christmas spirit to go along with the violence

Just like Die Hard (and Batman Returns)😄

[one-armed dwarf]

On a Tarkovsky kick right now. Watched Andrei Rublev (1966) and Stalker (1979)

 

Being honest, found Rublev a bit of a struggle. It's about medieval russian monks suffering for their art. A horse gets killed in one bit. There's a sequence towards the end where they build a bell (40 minutes out of 3 hours) which is brilliant, but I feel I lacked a lot of the historical and theological context to really get much out of this one. Maybe a rewatch years down the line

 

Stalker was great, got this on criterion blu ray. Slow, lingering takes, apparently this director's whole thing is to make film that feels like looking at a painting, hence the extremely slow pace. There's a long unbroken sequence where they're about to enter the zone where the film goes from sepia into colour which hits like a truck. This was much more easy to get into for myself as its a hard sci fi setting, a meteor crashes and creates around it a zone of unknown properties, which has an exclusion zone built around with a sort of gulag but it's to keep people out rather than in.

 

 

It will make you think of the Chernobyl disaster which happened only a few years after filming this, particular once you learn that one of the lead actors and Tarkovsky himself are believed to have developed terminal lung cancer from filming in all the shitty, contaminated water in 'the zone' (it's downstream from a chemical plant)

 

The video game also shares a creative inspiration, though they aren't actually similar at all.

 

I've ordered Tarkovksy's book Sculpting in Time which describes his method

[mmmark]

I’ve watched Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part 1 and needless to say it’s really great. Flies long at a nice pace and has some great action sequences. 9/10 

 

Apparently didn’t perform a well as was hoped by studios and part 2 will be retitled. I don’t think it’s ever a good financial decision to call a movie part 1. Just leave it as a surprise cliff hanger or something. 

[Nag]

I forgot to say I'd watched Resident Evil : Death Island... for as good as (most) of the games are it baffles me that there's yet to be a truly good Resi film cgi or otherwise.

 

This is the standard cgi action fest where everyone routinely pulls of superhero feats while looking like its action sequences are running at ×1.5 speed. About the only good thing is Jill getting a good deal of screen time and them using the recent 3rd remake model (clearly the best Jill) and them touching on her ptsd after what happened in Resident Evil 5.

[mfnick]

Renfield
 

Yo, that shit slapped. Went in with barely any expectations and had a thoroughly good time. 
 

8/10

[Jimboxy]

I watched The Killer, the new David Fincher assassin "thriller".

I really enjoyed this. I was a little on the fence with it after watching it, but I've been chewing it over in my head for a few days now and for me it's top 5 Fincher, really good. It feels like something that is going to produce some interesting video essays on the state of consumerism or something like that. It looked gorgeous, but it's Fincher so no great shock there. I liked the slow mundane pace, with brief moments of low key, fairly realistic action and violence. Pretty much all the narration could be put on motivational posters, which is pretty funny and I think probably deliberate. I'm going to watch it again soon, I think a second viewing my throw up some underlying stuff missed on first viewing.

 

I also saw Wish today at the cinema with the kids. It was odd and didn't quite work. I didn't enjoy it as much as Encanto or Moana. If you're a Disney or animation nerd it's cool as it incorporates loads of early Disney animation styles and tropes, mainly like Easter Eggs, it was fun spotting them though. I didn't like the animation style, it was 3d, sort of cell shaded characters, but with the old fashioned painted backgrounds, with any animals or objects animated like original hand drawn Disney films. It was a little jarring and gave it a bit of a JRPG cut scene aesthetic. Also I missed a chunk in the middle as my youngest got scared so I had to sit outside with him, I don't think I missed much in any sense of the word though

 

[mmmark]

ROBODOC: The Creation Of Robocop is four episodes each of over an hour long per episode and is absolutely fantastic. You probably have to like Robocop first but even if you don’t this is top tier making of documentary. 10/10

 

 

[one-armed dwarf]

Fallen Leaves (2023), a sort of very tonally strange romantic comedy (i think, Finnish comedy seems strange) about two middle aged people stuck in a holding pattern in their lives, and try to awkwardly form connection with each other. Its set in the modern day but the only reason you know this is cause of the radio broadcasts about the war in Ukraine. Otherwise it feels like it takes place in the 90s due to the old phones people use, its like a place unstuck in time where other than a scene in an internet cafe (another anachronism possibly), modern technology barely exists

 

The actor who plays Ahti the janitor in the Remedy games has a small part, which again delivers some of the strangely deadpan comedy that's all over this weird movie

 

Anyway that was my first cinema visit since Joker. I dont have a cinema near me anymore but was in Dublin this weekend

[mmmark]