What movie are you viewing at the moment?

[scoundrel]

Originally Posted by DrBone

Watched this last night......

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1392170/?ref_=nv_sr_2



First thing to say about this movie is that I did like it, will watch it again and look forward to seeing the sequel...

But, as much as I like Jennifer Lawrence as 'Katniss' it did take me a while to engage with her character.........and couldn't really get into any of the other cast, a lot of whom were papery at best.....

That being said I thing I'm probably not the target audience as I'm a 40 something horror/thriller fan amongst other things, and this is a 12cert film......and possibly suffered due to cuts suggested by the 'BBFI'.......I really needed more gore more tension and a faster pace........and not being constantly reminded of/wanting to see again 'Battle Royal'.....

Overall, it's a well made film, but could have been a lot better.....

Battle Royal......Without cheese

IMDB gives it 7.2.......I'd go along with that.........

I am watching this on Channel 4 at the moment and I find it rather interesting and so far it is managing to be sinister and chilling with hardly any violence, though obviously once the Games begin we will get some violence then, indeed. The film portrays a world which is disturbingly recognisable and suggests the callousness and pitilessness of our own world; how cruelly it divides between the affluent world and the global gutter of oppressed misery. I find that vision of fear, oppression and latent hatred is actually more compelling than any bloodshed as such.

Jennifer Lawrence is excellent as the reluctant but rather deadly Katniss Everdeen, clearly detesting the whole charade, but chock full of raw courage and, having refused to knuckle under, resolved to go down with her colours nailed to the mast and all guns blazing. Very good performance. She is also rather well supported by Woody Harrelsen as the drunken former Games winner who is her consultant and adviser and Elizabeth Banks as the very creepy "chaperone" (jailor without keys) whose demeanor blithely assumes that the two District Twelve contestants are enjoying the whole experience simply because the condemned cell has five star accomodation. There are other enjoyable villains, including Wes Bentley as the Games coordinator.

[scoundrel]

Originally Posted by MaxJoker

Gawd , a tad rough loose
He`s made some darn decent (Sorry for swearing ) pictures and acted well in them you know . Films such as Major Dundee , Soylent Green , Planet of the Apes , Will Penny , Khartoum , The Agony and the Ecstasy plus The Naked Jungle !.
To name but seven !!
So there

I''m glad you didn't mention Ben Hur

[Tmee2020]

16 Blocks (2006)

Bruce Willis, Mos Def.



Bruce Willis is a NYPD detective, even more washed up and disillusioned than usual. He has to take Mos Def, a witness in a lockup, down to the Supreme Court in Centre St. On the way Bruce stops at a liquor store for a stiff belt and all hell breaks loose.

From then on it's a prolonged chase, Mos Def is very good. I had trouble picking up the dialogue but that's all right. I thought the movie is good and I liked it a lot.

It's fun to recognise a location. The setting is The Bowery and Chinatown, right where I stayed at a couple of different places with a good friend of mine many years ago. Chinatown and the Lower East Side hasn't changed much, at least not up until 2006.

[Wendigo]

The Devil's Men aka Land of the Minotaur
www.imdb.com/title/tt0074769/


A priest and a PI look into a series of deaths of young adults in Crete and find that an old cult based on the Minotaur is still going strong. In the main it's a decent horror yarn with a nice reversal of usual roles with Peter Cushing as the main villain and Donald Pleasence as the heroic priest. Plenty eye candy but just missing an actual non-human monster but it passed a good 90 or so minutes.

clip
www.dailymotion.com/video/x3rrqym

full movie
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3rrkb5

[73north]

Black Tar Road (2016)



BLACK TAR ROAD is a gritty, dark, love story between two women, Heather and Charlie, who meet at a desolate truck stop. Charlie McElroy (Amber Lee) is a drug mule, who mules drugs for an operation that is run out of an interstate truck stop. After Charlie hangs around town where she meets Heather Plath, (Noelle Messier) a hardened truck stop prostitute who's spent her life in the rural landscape. Few films are more despairing and yet, curiously, so hopeful as this one, which argues that even at the very end of the road, at the final extremity, we can find some solace in the offer and acceptance of love. These women fall in love with each other.

I actually enjoyed the Film , and both lead actresses were excellent -
as usual , both have had success in getting work , but not in Oscar winning Films that jump out at you , or in a Block Buster -
but they are undeniably , very good at acting ( which counts )

[Wendigo]

Bigfoot - Holler Creek Canyon (2006)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0494235/

I'm a sucker for monster movies, and I've loads of Bigfoot movies

A group of friends are on a camping in the woods but one of the bigger local residents isn't pleased to see them. The creature is never fully seen probably to save money but there's lots of nude women and Ron Jeremy as Rik the Park Ranger and local store owner and a make-up wearing doll fixated hillbilly

There is so little about this on the net :O why

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HwkIJeU0ZI

[Wendigo]

Bitter Feast (2010)
www.imdb.com/title/tt1477835/


A pompous TV celebrity chef with attitude Peter is sacked from his restaurant job after a scathing online review by a critic JT Franks who specialises in tearing chefs to pieces. The worm turns when the chef kidnaps the critic and forces hij to live without food to try and teach him a lesson.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OSQWZFgwfQ

[Sir Honkers]

Thanks to Scoundrel and Hound Dog reminding, To Kill A Mocking Bird.

[Wendigo]

Burke and Hare (2010)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1320239/


John Landis' black comedy about the two Edinburgh body snatchers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UE7KvAyVnbw

[scoundrel]

It seems that Hallmark is a bit like the Minor League in baseball or like third tier soccer in the UK; a refuge for washed up or has-been actors, earning decent but unspectacular money doing decent but unspectacular films. But this is not necessarily a bad thing. I have watched a few of these films over the last several weeks and I note that they are very predictable and formula driven, a lot like McDonalds; but unlike McDonalds they are quite well made and certainly the washed up has-been players are proper actors who know how to perform their roles.

Last weekend I watched another of their romantic comedies (romcom seems to be their staple diet) and I found it pleasing and worth my time. Lacey Chabert is a stalwart romcom heroine of the Hallmark troupe and why not? She's pretty and she has a pretty good acting range; Hollywood are stupid to overlook her and their loss is Hallmark's and Broadway's gain, plus she gets by with quite a bit of voice work in computer games.

In this one she plays Jenny Fintley, an aspiring chef who inherits a half share of a rather ramshackle big old house in Pennsylvania and wants to use it to start a restaurant cum bed and breakfast establishment. To her discomfiture, her deceased great aunt left the other half to the heirs and successors of her deceased carer and caretaker, which turns out to mean that the co-owner is a brash and pushy Wall Street mergers and acquisitions type who simply want to sell the house, trouser his share of the proceeds and get on with his daily life. As a compromise, he agrees to let her buy him out in instalments because the alternative would be litigation and because she has batted her eyelids, pouted and played the sympathy angle, and he relented as the path of least resistance. This generosity, albeit granted with gritted teeth, is our first clue that Brian Howell (played by Brennan Elliott) is not entirely obsessed by money.

The film benefits from a well crafted script and a storyline which is not quite as far fetched as romcoms typically are. It is the law of probate and the rules of economics which have brought X and Y into the same space and it is the laws of nature which work to bring X and Y closer together within that space. The only deus ex machina element acting to short-circuit the natural barrier between X and Y is the predicament which Brian finds himself stuck with when he is fired, his bonus forfeited and his finances suddenly pretty desperate, all because his boss loused up a big merger and managed to pass the buck to him. Jenny has moved into the Pennsylvania house and is on the way to making it decently clean and habitable again only to wake up in the middle of the night and find Brian becalmed on the porch; Brian is in effect homeless and this is now the only roof in America where he is legally entitled to come in and take shelter, no matter how much Jenny would rather he did not.

The journey from here is fairly easy to predict but for all that is still a relaxing and comfortable trip. Brennan Elliott does his part of the assignment quite well, and we see why people whom he has rubbed up the wrong way will come round to him and forgive him eventually. It is not only the heroine whom Brian Howell has irritated; he has the big-city, big-money superiority complex which is a thematic target of the rather mild satire typical of a Hallmark film, and we do get some enjoyable scenes as he is cleverly and gently put in his place by various local yokels who turn out to be not nearly as intellectually challenged as Brian expected.

For example, Brian has rather petulantly vented at the local plumber who has given bad news about the house's derelict water supply: $5K to fix that, if you please. Brian has not got $5K or anything near; neither has Jenny. Yet self-evidently they must restore the water supply. So Brian decides he has only one option and seeks out the nearest hardware store in order to begin a grim self-education in how to mend broken plumbing. Only it turns out that Tommy the plumber, to whom Brian has already been openly rude and disrespectful, is also the owner of the store. After trying to be more polite and getting only the monosyllabic replies which Tommy has offered all along up this moment, Brian's patience wears thin again and he expresses his feeling more freely, same mistake as before.

Brian: You know...this single word reply thing isn't helping. Perhaps you really need to say more.
Tommy: makes firm eye contact but remains courteous - Perhaps you need to say a little less.
Brian: thinks about it - Maybe you're right. But I don't have a lot of choices. I have a house with no water supply and I don't know a wrench from my elbow. I really need some advice.
Tommy: First advice: a wrench doesn't bend

.

The next scene shows Tommy helping to load various pipes and tools into the back of a decrepit Ford station wagon which penniless Brian has salvaged from a barn behind the house as the only vehicle to which he has access. By humbling himself, apologising, and appealing for help and advice, Brian has gained an expert opinion, the essential parts he will need, and a workable plan which, much effort and frustration later, turns into the modest success of a survival test passed, water supply restored for a lot less than $5K, but bizarre musical notes coming from the pipework whenever the tap is on.

In fact, the film is all about small scale human interaction and features some pleasantly observed personal growth from both male and female lead characters. Their gradual coming together is credible and nicely done, including the misunderstandings and silly pride which almost ruins it and almost splits them apart. Thinking Jenny is resuming the relationship she broke off with self-centred Darryl, her globe-trotting ex-fiance, Brian elects to take an opening in Wall Street rather than persevere with the slowly blossoming and promising new direction he has started on in Pennsylvania. If he thought Jenny might be available, a different face of things would be seen; and Jenny strongly guesses this could be the case. But she is simply too proud to say the thing which is screaming to be said: "Please don't go. Please stay." And in the absence of those words, Brian indeed goes back to New York leaving Jenny weeping when she is alone because she was not strong enough to do what she knew she should have done.

In the end, Brian has his head slapped by a mutual friend who is cross with him for failing to see what is right under his nose and, knowing now that the old boyfriend is out of the competition, decides to do the bleeding obvious and go back to big old house in order to ask to be forgiven. It is a very low key happy ending, and quite pleasing; nothing high pitched, but rather like the simple recognition between two people that they are already a couple. I like this film for not trying to be anything more than what it is and for concentrating on doing simple things well. I think the critics of Hallmark are correct in saying that no one will ever win an Oscar for work done in a Hallmark film; but I also think the world has a place for films like this one and no one who acts in such a film has anything to excuse or explain away.