I Just Watched (Films)

[Achtung Englander]

Pinocchio 2019

I really enjoyed this. Being a sucker for adult fantasy (see also Karel Zeman or Tale of Tales) this is right up street. The acting is really good especially the kid who plays Pinocchio. Its funny to read it getting slated on IMDB by American parents who are disgusted by the fact their kids were frightened by it. Good. It was not made for them.
8/10

This from trivia from IMDB
After several adaptations that had made the story family-friendly, director Matteo Garrone wanted this movie to go back to the grim atmosphere and satirical tone of Carlo Collodi's original novel, complete with depictions of cruelty and extreme poverty. Garrone said that much of the criticisms of the film's violent content came from adults, while children in the test audience were quite relaxed about that aspect.

[Raid]

The Matrix Trilogy - Not as good as I remembered. I doubt I've seen any of the Matrix films in at least ten years and I think it shows as they didn't feel familiar, but a product of their time. There are good bits; the lobby shootout, Neo's fight against a thousand Smiths in an alley courtyard, and the excellent highway chase with the keymaster, but I'm surprised at just how much of the rest of it is forgettable. Trinity's latex catsuit looks ridiculous, and the style in general hasn't aged well. Even the soundtrack and score weren't nearly as good as I remember them being. It also didn't help that Amazon's streaming versions look like they were recorded from the DVDs using a camcorder and then shoved through an AI upscaler - they can't possibly have looked this bad in the cinema.

I finally got around to starting a Netflix show that people have been telling me to watch for a year now; Cobra Kai. The only problem was that I hadn't seen The Karate Kid, so I watched The Karate Kid. It's... alright, I guess. Obviously I don't have the nostalgia for it, leaving me with a fairly awkward main character and a surprisingly not particularly racist Mr Miyagi. The pacing's weird, and Daniel doesn't actually learn any karate - he just builds a little bit of muscle he needs to deflect blows. I'm aware that there are sequels, but I think I'll just move on to Cobra Kai.

[Achtung Englander]

Koko-Di Koko-Da

Its supposed to be a horror - I think. Similiar to Run Lola Run or Groundhog Day, it combined repeated events with impending doom. I liked the idea of the antagonist being a kind of circus leader. The true horror comes in the first 15 minutes before the supposed horror kicks in. More distributing than scary. Not sure what the film was trying to say.
5/10

[Achtung Englander]

The Matrix Trilogy - There are good bits;

That pretty much sums up the films.

[Sly Boots]

Saw a pretty good one on Netflix the other day:

Searching

Harold from Harold and Kumar's daughter goes missing, and he joins the police efforts to find her. So far so cliched, right? The thing that makes this one a bit different, though, is that everything takes place from the other side of a computer screen as he uses the internet and social media to try to find clues about what happened to her. It actually comes across as very convincing, like how a worried parent might really react if something like that were to happen, and there are enough twists and turns in the story to keep it interesting throughout.

Not a 10/10 film by any means, but well worth a watch.

I also saw Spree with the high school bully from Stranger Things. He plays what I guess is similar to an Uber driver, who in his private life has been trying, and failing, for 10 years to become a famous internet content creator, and one day just snaps. It's not horror, I'd probably put it more in the gory comedy-satire kind of camp. It won't win any awards but I actually found it quite entertaining. Another one to maybe check out if you're stuck for something to watch and want something that you can turn your brain off for.

[Alan]

A Christmas Bob
It just made me angry how dumb it is. The first film was heartwarming despite its tacky rubishness but this one was just gash.

Bob is still adorable though, rip little fella.

[Achtung Englander]

Les Miserable (Netflix)

Brilliant. A mix between Do The Right Thing, Training Day and La Haine.

8/10

[Raid]

Saving Private Ryan

I was honestly expecting this to be a disappointment; it must be 15 years since I last watched it (I really couldn't remember much of it) and I find a lot of 90s films just don't pass muster after so long. However, it's still superb and it just doesn't look like its aged. I don't know whether that's just because of how much it cost to make or the sparing use of CGI (the only CGI effects I noticed were the addition of barrage balloons on the beach), but I suppose that's to be expected from one of the most important action films of the decade - SPR practically served as the template for how to make a modern, gritty action film, and so many of the techniques have become commonplace.

It doesn't even lean in too much to that cringeworthy military fanaticism that the US is kinda known for despite being the perfect material for it; sure, there's a few lingering shots of the Stars and Stripes in the prologue and epilogue scenes, but they're heavily desaturated and don't exactly scream "USA! USA! USA!"

Surprise! One of the greatest films ever made still great!

[Animalmother]

SPR is on my to rewatch list for a long time now, must have a look soon.

Rambo
I remember this film being violent, I've seen it several times already. I somehow just forgot how very violent it was, fucking hell it doesn't hold back. The story isn't much to talk about, a human tree trunk brings a group of white assholes into Burma to bring Jesus to the heathens. He then brings another group of white assholes to rescue the previous group and ends up destroying half of Asia in the process. The last 15 minutes is possibly some of the most wonderfully gratuitous death by gunfire ever committed to film, people literately get chopped in half by bullets. Love it

[Wrathbone]

Red Sonja

I hadn't seen this for about 15 years and my recollection was that it was kind of dull, mostly terrible and Arnie wasn't in it that much. While the production values are even worse than those in Conan the Destroyer, I mostly enjoyed it! It's fun fantasy nonsense, and Arnie (who plays Conan, except there was a rights dispute so they had to call him Calidor instead) is in it more than I remembered.

The low point has to be the scene where they're all stuck in a big pool being attacked by a big fish for what feels like 30 or 40 minutes. Endless shots of Arnie rolling around in the water giving it his best "Aiiyyannnahgghhieee!", while eventually pointing out that it's a mechanical fish because the prop was clearly so bad that they couldn't be bothered pretending it was meant to be biological.

6/10

[Alan]

I CANT KEEL EET!!! EETS A MASHEEENE!!

[Wrathbone]

Apparently he used to threaten his children with having to watch Red Sonja if they misbehaved.

[Raid]

Dune

As I've mentioned elsewhere, I've been pretty ill this week. Sci-fi is my comfort genre, it's pretty much what I was raised on, but perhaps my first watch of Dune was a poor choice for this moment in time. I sat down with my big chinese delivery and was subjected to:
- A thing (that may have been an alien or an evolved human, it wasn't clear) in a giant fish tank with a face made up almost entirely of labias.
- A graphic depiction of the protagonist having his hand dissolved.
- a transparent juice carton where the imbiber squishes a small mole to drink it's seemingly delicious fluids.
- a man having his face boils lanced filling the entire screen.
- a pull tab in someone's chest that when removed starts blood pouring from the wound underneath.
- the boil face man floating through the air, having a mid air shower in vile-looking black liquid before descending on pull tab person and seemingly drinking their blood.

Most of my meal went in the fridge to see if I fancied it tonight instead.

I absolutely hated the design in this. Most of the props look like they were made from pieces of bar equipment haphazardly glued together. The visual effects were absolutely atrocious considering this came out after the entire original Star Wars trilogy, three Star Trek films and Tron. The effects for the shield belt things that Paul and Gurney use are so horrible to look at that it's downright impossible to work out what's going on (have you ever seen videos of when a GPU is on its last legs and is mistakenly rendering polygons in places that they shouldn't be? It's basically that). They just didn't put in half of the weapon effects, and there are numerous scenes where characters who should have the glowing blue eyes don't. And having characters' inner monologues mixing constantly with their actual dialogue was a horrible idea.

The sad thing is I think I enjoyed the fiction, it's just everything else that I disliked. The acting's not great, the music and sound design are forgettable, and the pacing's a mess.

How close was this to the source material? I only ask because I've seen comments that it, well, isn't, but I watched the trailer for the new Dune supposedly coming out this year and they're almost identical; I've never read the book but I recognised every scene as if it were taken from the 1984 adaptation.

[Sly Boots]

Dune

As I've mentioned elsewhere, I've been pretty ill this week. Sci-fi is my comfort genre, it's pretty much what I was raised on, but perhaps my first watch of Dune was a poor choice for this moment in time. I sat down with my big chinese delivery and was subjected to:
- A thing (that may have been an alien or an evolved human, it wasn't clear) in a giant fish tank with a face made up almost entirely of labias.
- A graphic depiction of the protagonist having his hand dissolved.
- a transparent juice carton where the imbiber squishes a small mole to drink it's seemingly delicious fluids.
- a man having his face boils lanced filling the entire screen.
- a pull tab in someone's chest that when removed starts blood pouring from the wound underneath.
- the boil face man floating through the air, having a mid air shower in vile-looking black liquid before descending on pull tab person and seemingly drinking their blood.

Most of my meal went in the fridge to see if I fancied it tonight instead.

I absolutely hated the design in this. Most of the props look like they were made from pieces of bar equipment haphazardly glued together. The visual effects were absolutely atrocious considering this came out after the entire original Star Wars trilogy, three Star Trek films and Tron. The effects for the shield belt things that Paul and Gurney use are so horrible to look at that it's downright impossible to work out what's going on (have you ever seen videos of when a GPU is on its last legs and is mistakenly rendering polygons in places that they shouldn't be? It's basically that). They just didn't put in half of the weapon effects, and there are numerous scenes where characters who should have the glowing blue eyes don't. And having characters' inner monologues mixing constantly with their actual dialogue was a horrible idea.

The sad thing is I think I enjoyed the fiction, it's just everything else that I disliked. The acting's not great, the music and sound design are forgettable, and the pacing's a mess.

How close was this to the source material? I only ask because I've seen comments that it, well, isn't, but I watched the trailer for the new Dune supposedly coming out this year and they're almost identical; I've never read the book but I recognised every scene as if it were taken from the 1984 adaptation.

Read the book, it's a classic. The film is a mess and I hated it when I saw it.

[Animalmother]

Controversial viewpoint here but I found the books to be very overrated and a wee bit boring.

REC
Spanish found footage horror that is probably the best of its kind. First 10 minutes are pretty dull but then it just goes apeshit until the end. Genuinely creepy and with good acting through out, everyone looks like their pissing themselves in panic You do have to contend with people yelling in Spanish and a few too many jump scares but it's a cracker.

Never seen part 3 or 4 but heard they're a bit pish anyway.