What are you watching?

[paul h. woly boly Find all posts View Profile Close paul h.]

Just watched that new THE FIGHTING FIST OF SHANGHAI JOE disc from Wild East. Looks very nice, especially for a film of this pedigree and age. Super entertaining and goofy. Has some decent extras as well.

[Andrew Monroe Pallid Hands Find all posts View Profile Close Andrew Monroe]

I need to pick up that SHANGHAI JOE BD. I watched the Poison Idea documentary LEGACY OF DYSFUNCTION last night. Really cool stuff, lots of live footage and fascinating interviews. Myrtle Tickner (bass player) was drunk as hell for his interview, ha.

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

Mank. Best Fincher film in a very long time. I've hated everything he's made after Fight Club.

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

Mank. Best Fincher film in a very long time. I've hated everything he's made after Fight Club.

Somehow there's a surprise Fincher on Netflix that I've never heard of. What a time to be alive. Tried to watch it last night. I was quite enjoying it. It had a Coen Brothers feel at time. My woman though requested that I switch it off after an hour. I think it's one that requires a degree of film buffery to be enjoyed, or at least a base level knowledge of Citizen Kane. I hope to get back to it tonight.

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

Mank
Meh... It's well shot is the best I can say. I would've liked to see more of the Hollywood as propaganda factory angle which was far more interesting than the rest of the meandering film. They could've cut out 25 minutes easily. That said... Gary Oldman is always Gary Oldman and I really liked Amanda Seyfried in this, which is something I never thought I'd ever write in a sentence. Still thoroughly "Meh..." overall. I'll most likely never rewatch this again.

[agent999 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close agent999]

I enjoyed Burgess Meredith as Mank.

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

Black Bear
I'll watch anything starring Aubrey Plaza and this was very decent but not great.
I'm not sure which part was real and which was fake (I'm leaning towards fake on both)
and I don't think the bear actually means anything. This was quite uncomfortable viewing
at times but also incredibly funny with stuff like the incompetent stoned script girl and the
AD with the constant shits as well as the running gag of spilling coffee. I liked it. The male
lead looks so much like my cousin did in the 90's it's freaky, so that cracked me up as well.
Good stuff.

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

A rewatch of Black Book. There was a point about an hour or so into this where I was thinking 'this is a damned good.movie. Why is this only the second time I've seen it?' It's crude and over the top, as you'd expect from Veerhoven, with lashings of sex and violence that's offset by a high budget classy production. Exactly how I like my movies.

It keeps going though. The story it winds up telling is the not the one that I was expecting it to tell halfway through. So it feels disjointed. And to tell that story it needs to have some pretty serious coincidences come together. Not an issue in a trash movie but this feels like it should be better than that.

Ill come back to it in another 15 years I guess.

[The Silly Swede Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close The Silly Swede]

Also watched Mank. Well made, and well acted, but it never managed to grab me. I just didn't care.

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

Honest Thief
Liam Neeson is basically a genre unto himself at this point. This is solid stuff as usual. Bankrobber goes legit and turns himself (and the money) in but dirty cops decide that they wanna get rich, so they set him up for murder and Liam has to do Neeson-y stuff again. Oh and his girlfriend gets caught in the crossfire. Fast paced, entertaining and with a good supporting cast. Robert Patrick, Kate Walsh, etc. Jai Courtney is also in it. He works better in smaller parts like this. I don't know who he was sleeping with at the time but he got a big star push out of nowhere for some reason a couple of years ago, despite being pretty bland and boring, not to mention quite goofy looking. He certainly didn't have star quality or "it". Anyhoo... I speculate and digress. He does fine here. I loved Jeffrey Donovan's sad sack character with the goofy little dog in tow. Nice to see him not play a scumbag for once. This is far from a masterpiece but I really liked it. One for the rainy days. Robert Patrick should've been in it more though.

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

The Mortuary Collection. Are there any words that put foreboding in a man's heart quite the short phrase 'A Shudder Original'? Probably not. I put this on last night after reaching a sort of peak of exhaustion where only bad, mindless, horror would fit the bill. Was surprised to find this isn't entirely mindless.

It's an anthology horror. Four short horror stories with a framing story in which a teenage girls goes for a job at a mortuary with the world's creepiest mortician played by Clancy Brown. Big Clancy Brown fan here.

The productions values are pretty great and some of the stories have some nice stuff in them. It gets graphic, there's an exploding penis that will probably stick with you... God knows the image has stuck with me...Theres a lack of restraint here though and a base level of tastelessness that makes this hard watching for me. It gets pretty gross. And pretty stupid.

It's also playing with idea of how we like our stories to be. A bit like When A Monster Calls. WAMC though had a clear theme running through that resonated. TMC is more scrambling round trying to find what it's point is commenting on storytelling troupes and doesn't ever really find it.

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

The Pale Door. Joe Lansdale presents: A wild bunch of cowboys botch a train robbery and hole up in a brothel to nurse their wounds. Problem is, the prostitutes are all witches and they are after blood.

Struck me as a can't miss scenario for derivative blood and breasts fun. How wrong can one man be?

I gotta stop watching these Shudder Originals. This is unbelievably unprofessional stuff. It's the production design that stands out for the harshest pilloring. They've got good costumes and a decent wild west set but everything looks so staged. The wild west has never looked so clean. The cowboys look like they just stepped out of a costume shop and have been warned they won't get their deposit back if they get one mite of dirt on their outfits.

Then there's the cinematography. You get so used to everything being at such a professional standard these days that it really jumps out at you when a production fails at being competent. No word of a lie, this film would have looked better if even I'd shot it. The colour temperature is constantly wrong so nighttime looks like daylight, it looks essentially ungraded. No atmos at all. Hideous.

All that of course you could sort of ignore if the story were good. Well it wasn't. It sucked. And it totally failed to take advantage of its brothel setting so dont expect any cheap thrills.

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

Skin Trade
I love Dolph Lundgren but he will never be a good actor. Ever. Creed 2 is probably as good as it gets.

He was however a very good action star. I have seen all his stuff and own most of it on some form of physical media.
Growing up it was awesome to see a Swedish dude kick ass on the screen. He's been cranking out sub par shit these last
few years after Creed 2. Some of the worst films of his entire career even, which is saying something when it comes to the
Swedish giant.

This film however was more of a passion project for him. He wrote it, produced it and was originally going to direct it but
opted for hiring some Thai guy instead. Skin Trade is one of his very best films. It's the old Taken vigilante formula. He tries to
stretch a little acting wise, but it's borderline cringy when he's supposed to cry or be sad. The mean mugging vigilante parts are
excellent however and it helps that it is slickly shot and put together. It has a nice visual look with interesting locations and there
is a kick ass chase sequence with DL on a motorbike and Tony Jaa on foot. The supporting cast is cool and the fight scenes are well
done.

DL's got a new film in the pipeline coming out soon. He directed and it stars Scott Adkins so it'll be interesting to see how it turns out.
He's really starting to look old though, so I hope he hangs it up soon and just start directing instead.

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

The Nice Guys: I've already expressed my love for this film in, of all places, The Nice Guys thread but not enough good things can be said about this film.

Shane Black has had about the most consistent career imaginable and yet this late film stands out as by far his best. There's not five minutes in this film that doesn't have a great line. It's basically perfect.

It was delegated to me to come up with a family, late night , Xmas movie for us to crash in front of and I choose this one even though Xmas doesn't show up till the last two minutes. No one begrudged me it as they were on the floor laughing half a dozen times throughout. I'm not big on this millenium for films. There's been a couple good Bonds. Killer Joe was good. I've seen Dredd about a dozen times. This is probably the best we've been gifted so far though. Hell, if you're watching a film and you love Russel Crowes character then you know there's a master screenwriter at work. Not many can do that.

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

The Croods
Did not expect much but holy shit, this was fucking hilarious.
Fast paced and inventive. Great fun. Gonna check out the
sequel ASAP.

Wonder Woman 1984
Sloppy mess. They even left in the green screen reflections in Kristen Wiig's
glasses. Gal Gadot is pretty as a picture but is a shit actress. They should've
made this in the 90's starring Sandra Bullock at the height of her career. Lynda
Carter makes a cameo and looks cadaverously ancient (and that's with
de-aging tech applied). I did enjoy the highway action scene in Egypt but the rest
was pretty meh. The cheetah character looked ridiculous and the FX was poor.
Last but not least. Waaay too long and too much of the all men are evil BS (but that's
every movie today). Piss poor.

The Very Excellent Mr. Dundee
Silly but entertaining spoof on the fickle nature of fame. I've always liked Paul Hogan.
Crocodile Dundee was the shit growing up and part 2 is still one of my favorite movies of all time.
There are some fun people showing up here such as Chevy Chase, John Cleese and Olivia Newton
John. Not a masterpiece but people are way too harsh on it on imdb. It was a decent enough 90
minutes with plenty of chuckles thrown in. It helps if you love Hoges though so admittedly I'm biased.