What are you watching?

[Randy G Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Randy G]

I like how Ant-Man is basically a heist film in superhero skin. Just like the Captain America: Winter Solider is a 70s paranoid thriller. The hybrid genre film + superheroes formula works well I think.

[Nabonga Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Nabonga]

Captain America-Civil War
Overlong bloated mess. The problem with these films is that they're so fixated on shared universes (we gotta have this guy meet that guy, don't forget this guy fighting that guy and this movie hinting about that movie...) that they cram in a million characters and frankly it gets overcrowded. I suspect it's about to get even more crowded with the upcoming stuff. The infinity wars or whatever they're called. I wonder when the bubble is gonna burst. Very "meh" this one.

[Alex K. Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Alex K.]

Surprised that you guys liked Ant-Man. I really didn't like that one, namely because of how generic and predictable it was. Civil War was okay but someone needed to die in that film. That and some of the logic behind it doesn't really hold up.

[Paul L Scholar of Sleaze Find all posts View Profile Close Paul L]

The infinity wars or whatever they're called. I wonder when the bubble is gonna burst. Very "meh" this one.

I tend to keep my opinion about the Marvel movies quiet because when I voice it, I feel like I'm being a spoilsport or widdling in people's bonfires, but I agree; they should be enjoyable (and I'm a big comic book fan since childhood) but most of them end up feeling like bloated and overloaded and, like you say, too busy laying the building blocks for the next films in the series. Invariably, they'd work much better at 100-110 minutes in length, I think; tighter, more focused films are what's needed.

THE LAST STAND aside, I've enjoyed the X-MEN films though. (However, I've not seen APOCALYPSE yet.)

Yesterday, I watched Ken Hughes' THE SMALL WORLD OF SAMMY LEE from 1962; a first-time viewing. Quite a good noir-type story set in Soho, with a host of recognisable faces (Alfred Burke, Warren Mitchell, Miriam Karlin, Wilfrid Brambell, Julia Foster, etc, etc) and some beautiful black and white location photography by Wolfgang Suschitzky. The location shines through; the story is padded out from Hughes' teleplay but works, and there's some frank discussion of contemporary themes (sex, prostitution, strip clubs). I liked it.

I also revisited THE SQUID AND THE WHALE, which I've not seen since it first came out. I wasn't hugely impressed at the time; I liked the film but even despite its brevity, the first half hour feels quite unfocused. (I get that it's emulating the snapshot quality of our memories, but I don't know if its wholly successful in doing so.) The final half hour, though, works very well, I think.

[Dom D Spoon! Find all posts View Profile Close Dom D]

The Flight Of The Phoenix. I've been on a bit of a Bob Aldritch kick after Feud. This is probably my favourite of his. Basically Jimmy Stewart is flying a dozen or so guys over the desert when they hit a sandstorm and have to go down. With the plane wrecked and no help on the way they set about cannibalising the old plane to build a new makeshift one to fly themselves out. It's a good Howard Hawks type of set up. A bunch of tired, desperatte men bouncing off each other in ways that are surprisingly nuanced for this sort of thing.

Jimmy Stewart is an odd hero. Generally your Holllywood leading man does all he can to come out of his films looking perfect but Jimmy Stewart is quite happy to use his all American charm to make essentially pretty terrible people into sympathetic characters. His turn in Vertigo is about as sweatily, desperate as any by a major leading man and here, while undeniably being the star, he is playing a guy who is basically a dick. A road block that the others have to get past to get out of the desert. And he's wrong about just about everything. And he knows he's wrong and he keeps carrying on anyway. Was, for example, Steve McQueen ever wrong about anything in his films?

Anyway big thumbs up from me if you've not seen it before.

[Nabonga Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Nabonga]

Dr Strange
I didn't care much for this one. Technically competent and the usual dazzling effects. Lots of people flailing their arms around while FX guys fill in the rest. Bendybink Binkadink is quite charming however. All in all, too much boring mumbo jumbo. Had to watch this one in 30 minute chunks at a time. In the end it reads "Dr Strange will return". Please don't.

[Nabonga Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Nabonga]

The Incredible Hulk
I have no real relationship with this character or the previous films. Sure I watched the show as a kid but I was never a fan or anything. The Hulk is hard to do right. While better than Lou Ferrigno dipped in green paint, cgi still makes for a gigantic uncanny valley that is extremely hard to ignore. I liked the Banner stuff a lot. Norton is a great actor (even if he's apparently a massive pain in the ass on set) and the action scenes were pretty neat but it jumps the shark as soon as they had Tim Roth turn into a huge (very silly looking) rage monster as well. Then it's one big computer generated slug fest. Maybe they wanted to make it more toyetic, who knows. I'd preferred it if they'd kept the focus on Banners struggle and search for a cure for his affliction and the conflict with the general. Promising but very flawed. There IS a good movie somewhere in there.

Now onto the X-men movies. I've seen the first three before but remember nothing about them. Didn't hate them, didn't really care either.

Took a break from super hero mayhem and watched this:

Castle Of The Creeping Flesh
Wow! Bonkers little film. Very flawed but still a good time. Didn't make a whole lot of sense but maybe I wasn't paying enough attention. That one dark haired chick had some messed up teeth. Yeesh! I could watch Janine Reynaud read the phone book for 4 hours. It's cool this even has a beautiful restoration and blu-ray release at all. The pointless surgery footage was really annoying though. If only Franco's Succubus (much of the same cast) could get such a great restoration.

[Nabonga Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Nabonga]

X-Men
No real opinion other than that it's competent filmmaking. I dig Hugh Jackman so that helps. I guess it's aight.

X-Men 2
At least 30 minutes longer than it should be (looked at the watch more than once) but yet another piece of competent filmmaking. I don't hate it, I don't really care either. Again HGH Jackedman is a saving grace plus I've always loved Kelly Hu for some reason. She should've been in it more.

It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia Season 11
It's hard to keep something consistently brilliant for 11 seasons going but these guys manage. Every episode was fantastic. Bunch of geniuses!

[Barry M Super Fiend Find all posts View Profile Close Barry M]

DESTINY TO ORDER (Jim Purdy, 1989). Eighties Toronto was pretty meta and apparently even shittier than I recall. Lightning zaps a word processor and a novelist's characters come to life: violin-playing Nietsche/Wagner fan and biker villain Michael Ironside ("I fucking love quiche") steals the floppy and goes duck amuck on the writer. There are characters named Thalia and Mellie. It ends, as you'd expect, with liebestod, torches and the death of the writer (spoiler), happily. With the Razorbacks, Micah Barnes band, and Holly Cole singing the dub for a song written by the Parachute Club. Also George Buza. Bamboo Club cameo (recipes); I didn't recognize the obligatory stripjoint. This is exactly like VIDEODROME: long live the new flesh, etc.

[Nabonga Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Nabonga]

X-Men - The Last Stand
People seem to hate this one. It's on par with the other films I think. An ok time waster.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Meh... kinda shit. Or rather pointless at least. I thought the depiction of them fighting in all the wars was very cool though.

[Johnny Stickman Way Out Hep Cat Find all posts View Profile Close Johnny Stickman]

Some recent watches:

The Greasy Strangler - Dope flick, very strange and fun. Definitely has a Henenlotter vibe to it. I was surprised by the father-son bonding element in it, that was a plus.

Of Unknown Origin - A pre-RoboCop Peter Weller versus a rat whose size is never fully determined. Sometimes it seems like it could be a small rat that fits into small places and other times it looks like a big @#$%&* from hell. Very cool flick, there's not enough man vs. rat movies with claustrophobic apartment settings. I think Stephen King might've said he dug this one.

Nerdland - Anybody who watches [adult swim] might be familiar with Titmouse, the animation studio that did quite a few of their shows. This is its founder's (Chris Prynoski) first feature. An R-rated cartoon that stars Patton Oswald and a script by the guy who wrote Se7en. Sad to say that it isn't good. The story just seems too conventional, I demand weirdness from adult cartoons.

Lisztomania - As Tom and Matt already pointed out. %$#@&^* BONKERS!!!!! I'm surprised that this film isn't more well-known outside of Ken Russell fandom. It has the ingredients to conjure up an infamous must-be-seen-to-be-believed film legend.

Spring Breakers - A Harmony Korine film starring James Franco and Disney Channel alumni Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudges. Pretty neon colors abound, some good shots of exposed breasts here and there. I'm not really sure if I liked it or not.

[Nabonga Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Nabonga]

X-Men: First Class
I enjoyed it a whole lot. Mostly because of the performances from Fassbender and Bacon. The young mutants were pretty boring but I liked seing more backstory for Xavier and Magneto and their relationship. Lots of familiar faces in basically cameos peppered throughout. Jason Beghe, Michael Ironside, James Remar, Ray Wise, Tony Curran, Brendan Fehr etc... One of the better films in the franchise.

Gun Woman
A low budget sleazy neo-exploitation movie like this has no business being this fucking good. Let's face it, most of them made these days are 90% awful/incompetent/intentionally cheesy in mostly the worst ways. Despite the awful, AWFUL title, Nude Nuns With Big Guns is one recent example of the exception as it is a fantastic piece of nu-exploitation. Same with Gun Woman. Expertly shot, shamelessly vile and brutal with a corageous performance from Asami (I was truly rooting for her all the way throughout the film) this is played dead straight, and while the premise is OUTLANDISH it really, really works beautifully. Tarantino wishes he could make something this cool. Best blind buy in forever.

The Wolverine
Much better than the silly Origins movie. The Japanese setting adds a nice flavour. Hiroyuki Sanada is always awesome and there's lots of cool ninja shit going down. The "twist" was extremely predictable but whatever. Watched the extended cut so there was some swearing and lots of blood flying around. The dude does have knives protruding from his knuckles so it only makes sense that there would be blood. 2h18mins is much too long for these things but still, I enjoyed it quite a lot.

[Nabonga Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Nabonga]

X-Men: Days Of Future Past
Another solid entry. Maybe a little too JLAW centric at times. She's not all that in my opinion. I was tired when I watched it so the time travelling and parallell fighting made for a strenous watch in that regard. Decent but probably a one time watch only.

Deadpool
Obnoxious and painfully unfunny. It's like it was written by ADD riddled 13 year olds giggling at their own "cleverness". Very Rob Zombie-ish. Horrifically violent but oddly chaste when it comes to nudity. I do like Reynolds but I laughed... no, chuckled... maybe two times during the entire film. Underwhelming but slickly made. Oh, and Gina Carano sucks a always.

[Nabonga Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Nabonga]

Fantastic 4
This is the Jessica Alba one. I didn't mind this at all. Nice bit of silliness.

Fantastic 4-Rise Of The Silver Surfer
Same as the first one. Nice bit of reality escape. I don't get the criticism about these films.

Fantastic 4
Josh Trank edition. Much better than the reviews suggested. This was probably a case of studio meddling. There is some cool stuff in here. Surprisingly dark at times. Asshole or not I'd like to see Trank get free reigns here.

Logan
Meh, it was alright I guess. Hella violent. Little kid was fucking annoying too. Sounded like Nelson De La Rosa when she started yapping rapidly in spanish.

Judex 1963
There is some awesome stuff in here but the pacing grinds to a complete halt towards the end. Mighty convenient too, to have a circus with an acrobat happen to roll by when you need access to a tall locked building. The chick who played the kidnapper was cool but I think Sylva Koscina could have pulled that off even better. She should've been in it more instead of like 5 minutes. Definitely gonna revisit this one soon.

[Matt H. Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Matt H.]

An unsettling double-feature last night:

THE BABY - I'd seen this before, but it really affected me this time around; my stomach was in knots the entire time. How this movie got a PG rating is really a mystery.

THE MARSUPIALS: THE HOWLING III - This movie is crazy. Part II gets all the attention as the craziest entry in the series, but I find this one to be much more interesting and unpredictable. I can't think of any other movie like it. It's less of a horror movie than it is a feverish piece of outsider art.