ysbreker

Movie/TV recommendations

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I can tell you I started to ruin my Video Game hobby by keeping track of how many games I've beaten and judging different games on what it means to complete them.

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I recently went through Indiewire's best movies of the past 6 years and picked about 40 or so movies to watch over the next year. I need to be really generous because i normally dont watch films any more but I'm happy to take the long way around.

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 The only thing I've got on that front is Killzone 2, which looks like the latest in a long line of Raid-a-likes.  

 

I hear it's the Citizen Kane of Raid-a-likes.

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My movie event of the year has arrived! I have been waiting for this since last Winter and checking almost daily - the new Criterion restoration of Chimes at Midnight has appeared on torrent sites! I would be happy to pay if there was a proper UK Blu-Ray release, but Mr. Bongo botched it last year. I'll buy it when it gets a new release there or if I ever get a region free player, I'll buy the Criterion one.

 

 

Can't wait to watch it two or three times within the next week or two. I've only seen it twice or thrice this year.

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Can you even get region-free blu-ray players? I know when I got my region 2 player it turned out to be a much bigger mission even to get it to play region 1 DVDs than the simple "enter a 4-digit code" procedure of DVD players. I had to buy a magic remote and everything, and even then it didn't help with blu-rays...

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Yeah, there are some. I'm not aware of any particulars. Just watched this version - looks great compared to Mr. Bongo! Also sounds better as some of the hiss is gone.

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PS. I need a region-free VOD player! (and don't tell me it's a VPN, there's also things like checking that a credit card is of the right country)

 

Just wanted to pay for and download The Scarapist (Amazon VOD | iTunes) but neither would accept my credit card as it's of the wrong country. (The Scarapist has some of the same actors as The Dark Knight, 2011, which was a great bad movie)

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Hello IdleThumbers!

 

I just watched Egoyan's Exotica, which I watched many years ago on TV for the first time. It called to mind another movie I once saw late at night on TV and which I wish to see again. Problem is of course that I neither remember its name nor much about the plot either. I'll try my best to describe the movie. Hopefully someone will be able to recognize it based on my description.

 

I remember that a car crash is involved. I remember that the movie jumps around in its chronology, and I think similarly to an Egoyan movie important details are revealed during the course of the movie to add up to a fully formed picture at the end. I remember that a good chunk of the movie plays in summer at a camping site. Visually there were big trees and somewhat pale sunrays. The central couple of the movie gets to know another couple. The central couple gets into an argument.

The male protagonist played once in a band and there's an aerial shot where you see the band dressed in furs playing their instruments in the midst of nature, a barren Tundra. Yeah, this surely must have been an Eastern European movie. I don't think it was a Russian one. Maybe Czech, but I'm not sure. It might have been released in the 90s.

I also remember a subplot where a male petrol attendant searches for a guy he once met and has a crush on through a local radio station. The searched for guy calls in then, talks sweetly and, if I remember correctly, the petrol attendant is ecstatic when he hears his voice again.

 

That's honestly all I can give you. In terms of tone and pacing it had something of a Lynch movie with its slow scenes that take their time and establish a mood. Not a movie with a dense flow of conversations I would say. And like I said, in terms of dealing out information it reminded me of an Egoyan movie.

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I & my wife really enjoyed Melissa Rauch's The Bronze - very fresh and engaging, despite a rather ho-hum ending.

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The Girl with All the Gifts is good! Occasionally reminded me of Last of Us, but the way the story progresses is more interesting.

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Starting the third season of Banshee and it's feeling really strong. Plot lines and events many shows would spread out seem to resovle in an episode with a lot of crazy memorable moments packed in the same ep. Yet each new ep there's something else ready to go and drag you in.

Two things especially the show has going for it are just how emotional & heartfelt the show does let its characters be sometimes.

When i first tried watching this my Dad had recommended it to me but it didnt take because I'd had just about enough macho bullshit in my life. Yet for all the dumb bro action and the problem solvoing in the show essentially boiling down to beatkhg the crap out of someone in an MMA fight; there's just enough of something else to pull me back in.

This is a show where confrontation, violence, and aggression are either seen as the correct tools or the best of a bad situatio but unlike other shows there's a different sense of gravitas to it. The characters arent beibg lionused for their actions, they're allowed to break down, they can show just how broken they are and what the consequences of their actions are doing to them.

It's still a show about a small us town with mostly punchy men who like their guns but there's still a heart to it that is usually lost in most other action films/tv.

It might be a small difference but a grizzled violent man might say in another show: "you might not like me but I'm here to do the only thing you wimps won't do"

But Banshee usually manages to change the message to: "you might not like me but here I am doing the only thing I can do, trapped in a way of my own makihg, and its destroying me".

The other thing the show has going for it in a really pulpy way is really good villains. From the Amish Kingpin, the Ukranian gangster, the Kinaho tribe 'freedom fighter', to the interstate trucking crime baron. Whether yoyre with then for a season or a side story you get to see the pathos of each one, part of their inner tragedy, how they continue to choose their own destruction even if its ultimately their way of redemption.

Few shows really get more than one great villain, or even just more than a handful of good characters. Yet Banshee is spoiled for choice and it feels kind of amazing.

Its not the best show you've ever seen. But what it does is usually super good.

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Kubo and the Two Strings is a technically amazing animation. A children's kung-fu/drama. With a stupidly simplistic story. I wish I could give a good rating just on technical excellence - I didn't know it was stop-motion and not 3D animation until I saw some low frame-rate animation occasionally and even then I found it hard to believe. The problem is that it has some really inane dialogue like "I should have listened to my parents" and "I guess I married a bug" (not direct quotes as it was dubbed in Estonian) and all of the character motivation comes from somewhere outside, and is unexplained. It's almost worse than a typical video game story from the 2000s.

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On a totally different topic, I have been watching WestWorld. I can't decide how I fell about it. They are playing with interesting concepts of humanity and drawing the line between machine intelligence and real intelligence. I just hope the hinted at deeper mysteries don't suck. The cast is stellar, I really like Jeffrey Wright

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Holy moly I don't think I could disagree more with the "classic movies shouldn't be given leeway" stance. Yowza. 

 

Anyway, I'm trying to catch up on horror flicks this month and we watched Maniac Cop which is a pretty standard, boring slasher except it has Bruce Campbell in it and oh MAN they could put this movie out today and it would be relevant as fuck. Also caught that Evil Dead remake which I was avoiding on principle but it turns out it's really good! Lots of gnarly gore and a completely rad ending. A bunch of nods to the original but with fun/smart twists (Demonic possession as a metaphor for heroin withdrawal is a small touch that went a long way).

 

We rented House of the Devil a few weeks ago and it was great at building tension, which I guess was the whole point. I wish I had caught it when it came out, before the trend of good horror throwbacks was a thing.

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Apparently they were trying to get a Maniac Cop remake off the ground for a while and even tried to get Nicholas Winding Refn (who, a long time ago, was Maniac Cop director William Lustig's roommate?!?) attached. That was two years ago, maybe they're still trying.

 

I highly recommend Maniac Cop 2. Way less dull, with some really amazing action scenes and an even weirder plot. And has this hot Maniac Cop rap song over the end credits.

 

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Holy moly I don't think I could disagree more with the "classic movies shouldn't be given leeway" stance. Yowza.

Anyway, I'm trying to catch up on horror flicks this month and we watched Maniac Cop which is a pretty standard, boring slasher except it has Bruce Campbell in it and oh MAN they could put this movie out today and it would be relevant as fuck. Also caught that Evil Dead remake which I was avoiding on principle but it turns out it's really good! Lots of gnarly gore and a completely rad ending. A bunch of nods to the original but with fun/smart twists (Demonic possession as a metaphor for heroin withdrawal is a small touch that went a long way).

We rented House of the Devil a few weeks ago and it was great at building tension, which I guess was the whole point. I wish I had caught it when it came out, before the trend of good horror throwbacks was a thing.

Just mentioning that Ash vs Evil dead is pretty fun. But it's pretty dumb and the way it handles all the leads is even dumber. Ash is condescending and gross in a Chevy Chase/Pierce Hawthorne way, the mexican sidekick is dim and dependant for most of the time, of course the girl needs saving. But if you have a need for more evil dead stupidity then the show has you covered. I never finished the whole season but i think there is an undercurrent of tongue in cheek self awareness. It just might not be enough to satisfy many people.

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Just mentioning that Ash vs Evil dead is pretty fun. But it's pretty dumb and the way it handles all the leads is even dumber. Ash is condescending and gross in a Chevy Chase/Pierce Hawthorne way, the mexican sidekick is dim and dependant for most of the time, of course the girl needs saving. But if you have a need for more evil dead stupidity then the show has you covered. I never finished the whole season but i think there is an undercurrent of tongue in cheek self awareness. It just might not be enough to satisfy many people.

 

It's loads of fun! I agree about all the characters, except I feel like the show has loads of self-awareness of it and makes sure Ash feels as stupid and old-guy as possible whenever his gross and insensitive jokes come up.

 

Season 2 just started and it's great!

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Herzog's Nosferatu was occasionally better than the original, especially the first half where the pace was good. Unfortunately it fell apart by the end somewhat, with pointless scenes that just ruined the pace. And to add to the ruination, over 10000 rats were harmed to make this picture.

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I haven't seen many horror films at all and as it's October I've been trying to correct that. I watched The Shout which was pretty fuckin good and Sleepwalker which was a very weird short film. Doing my best to follow along with this http://letterboxd.com/woodfella/list/hundreds-of-dead-bodies/ great podcast talking about a horror film a day for October. 

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Not looking at your post until I've watched them all!

 

Saw the new Tim Burton film today, Miss Peregrine's School For Peculiar Children or something like that. Really bad. So slow and full of confused, turgid lore. It doesn't even look that nice and Burton is lost here with the CGI - most of the monster designs are run-of-the-mill and the climactic fight scene is just terribly directed. How did he go from Beetlejuice to this? At least Chocolate Factory and Wonderland had some interesting visuals/moments. The only good thing about it is Samuel L Jackson - he works his relatively restrained monster make-up magnificently for a perfectly pitched performance - scary yet funny.

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Big Eyes is good up to the 3/4 or 4/5 point, then it's a touch mediocre! Not as good as Big Fish. I wonder what the third part of the Big Trilogy will be called.  

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Big Trouble In Little China - the re-imagining with Johnny Depp as Jack Burton.

 

(Yeah, Big Eyes was okay. Not the return to Ed Wood magnificence I was hoping for.)

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12 hours ago, brkl said:

Big Eyes is good up to the 3/4 or 4/5 point, then it's a touch mediocre! Not as good as Big Fish. I wonder what the third part of the Big Trilogy will be called.  

 

Big Eyes was the third movie. The first movie was Big.

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