ysbreker

Movie/TV recommendations

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1 hour ago, Cordeos said:

Has anyone here watched Boardwalk Empire? I am three episodes in now, it seems all right, but I would love to know if the show gets better or worse before I spend too much time with it. I am glad they toned down the slang after the first episode, it was a bit much.

 

I watched the first 2 or 3 seasons and I thought it was really good. It's basically the only HBO drama I've watched that hooked me enough to keep me coming back for more than a handful of episodes.

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I have a theory that Veep is actually the only tv show that has ever been good? The only reason I'm not certain of that theory is that I've never seen In The Thick of It, which very well may belong by Veep's side except I've seen clips of In The Thick Of It and I've seen the movie In The Loop and those characters don't seem as well-developed and distinct as Veep's.

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I saw Escape from Tomorrow and it was weird. The whole movie somehow seems as a strange dream, visually and aurally and plot wise, and I actually got a fever while watching it (although I don't rule out that something in the physical world also contributed). Not the best movie ever, but I would recommend seeing the first half at least. The movie was filmed secretly (AFAIK) in Disneyland.

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Hello friends. I would like to encourage you all to watch the 1997 film Cure by Kiyoshi Kurosawa. It's my favourite film I've seen this year. It's slow and eerie and uncomfortable. If you've not seen it go in knowing as little as possible.  Been in a bit of a funk with movies lately but this blasted me out of it. Amazing film.

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1 hour ago, Woodfella said:

Hello friends. I would like to encourage you all to watch the 1997 film Cure by Kiyoshi Kurosawa. It's my favourite film I've seen this year. It's slow and eerie and uncomfortable. If you've not seen it go in knowing as little as possible.  Been in a bit of a funk with movies lately but this blasted me out of it. Amazing film.

 

I can second this, it's pretty great. Deeply creepy without being jump scare-y.

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Has there ever been an Idle Movie Club? Thought it might be a fun thing to do. Like, take it in turns to pick one and all watch and discuss it. 

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People were doing that with Pixar movies at one point. Then, I think, people were expected to watch Cars, so it stopped.

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I finally had the chance to watch High-Rise by Ben Wheatley, from a year or so ago. I was quite excited by this, as I'm a huge fan of J.G. Ballard (the author of the novel on which it is based) but the film left me with thoroughly mixed feelings. 

 

It felt like it was constantly striving towards a certain tone that the directing and editing didn't quite know how to establish consistently. The lurid vision of 1970s Britain is laid on rather too thick, and so much of it - especially early on - is shot in such a way that feels like a pantomime version of Kubrick. And yet when things get going, there are moments in it - a handful of images - that have real potency. The skull; the dogs; everything involving the swimming pool. The heaps of black binbags everywhere. But all of it feels sharp and HD-ish when it ought to feel fuzzy and close; it's somehow not quite right.

 

Also Tom Hiddlestone didn't work for me. He is a charisma-free zone here. This being Ballard, you could argue that's exactly the point, but there's something about his performance I just couldn't swallow. He has the constant look of a faintly embarrassed public schoolboy throughout (and I say that as an oft-embarrassed ex-public schoolboy myself). Much of the rest of the cast were excellent, though. Reece Shearsmith is always good value for money.

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Harry & Tonto is a beautiful road trip movie about aging and is the best cat movie ever, hands down. Inside Llewyn Davis (which it resembles a little bit) is nothing compared to Harry and Tonto, and Paul Mazursky's image of America is beautiful.

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Started Girlboss on Netflix, liking it so far! Jake Fogelnest of 90s internet tv and Sirius radio fame is a writer/producer which was a pleasant surprise in the credits. 

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If you are one of those people who says "Man, they never make mid-tier films for adults anymore", The Lost City of Z is in multiplexes as we speak. I enjoyed it, though partly for the novelty of a big budget (it felt!) character study that is not in any way shape or form awards bait or a big money maker. Amazon is sort of the king of swooping in to critically acclaimed directors and helping them get not obviously commercial films made. I think they're just invested in the idea that enough auteurs with enough money will eventually get them an Academy Award.

 

So far:

Chi-Raq (Spike Lee)

Wiener-Dog (Todd Solondz)

Manchester By The Sea (Kenneth Lonergan)

Love & Friendship (Whit motherfuckin' Stillman)

Cafe Society (Woody Allen)

The Handmaiden (Park Chan-Wook)

Paterson (Jim Jarmusch)

Gimme Danger (Jim Jarmusch)

The Neon Demon (Nicholas Winding-Refn)

The Lost City of Z (James Gray)

Suspiria (Luca Guadagnino, the I Am Love and The Big Splash guy)

The Big Sick (Michael Showalter)

 

Granted, they distributed, not produced, these films, so who knows at what point in the financing process they were ever involved. Indie film distribution in 2017 is a weird and woolly world, which is why every movie you see has 70 production company title cards before it.

 

Anyway, The Lost City of Z is like Lawrence of Arabia with a smaller scope, and with some of the rougher, more challenging aspects sanded off. Still, well worth seeing.

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BTW. After watching the AG pilot yesterday I somehow felt like getting into series again (I haven't watched any for almost a year) and I think The Handmaid's Tale will be really good. At least the first episode was really full of tension, and Elisabeth Moss is really strong as the lead.

 

Also I noticed You're the Worst has a 3rd season, which I'm now watching as well, and am 2 episodes in. After some absence from it, I'm now thinking that maybe it isn't quite the "best thing on TV" I thought it was when I binged through the first two seasons, but it's still really good and different in several ways.

 

Also, watching You're the Worst made me think of another romantic comedy series that I liked, but I can't remember the title. It was about a guy and a girl who had both just broken up with their partners, I think, and kind of accidentally got together. The girl worked in Hollywood, as a teacher to some child star or something... Or maybe that was the guy.

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Ah, found it by searching this very thread. That series is Love and it has a second season that I haven't seen. But I remember so little of it that maybe I should watch from the start again... Also with Fargo continuing, and some by now classic series I haven't seen and other current ones, I think I could have quite busy evenings for a while... actually I kind of like the idea of watching less movies for a while and catching up with series.

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1 hour ago, Erkki said:

Ah, found it by searching this very thread. That series is Love and it has a second season that I haven't seen. But I remember so little of it that maybe I should watch from the start again... Also with Fargo continuing, and some by now classic series I haven't seen and other current ones, I think I could have quite busy evenings for a while... actually I kind of like the idea of watching less movies for a while and catching up with series.

 

For a second a show called Love Bites came to mind, but I realized it wasn't the show you were talking about.

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My Entire High School Sinking Into The Sea is an absolute treat of a movie, a completely beautiful and pleasurable experience that mixes the sensibilities of Don Hertzfeldt, Wes Anderson, and Bob's Burgers (among other things) into a hilarious doodle of an animated film. Really really tight balance between earnest high school emotions and bizarre sarcastic humor, with a highly rudimentary sketchy animation style opening it up to be endlessly expressive and weird. Can't recommend this one enough.

 

 

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I absolutely loved he fine line that the Christmas Special trod between overly sentimental and actually adding more story to the series. In my opinion it was one of the best Christmas specials ever. I go on about F&F a lot but, in terms of giving a feeling of family not being blood relations, Sens8 has F&F beat in terms of the naturalness of the setting and characters. The Christmas special is just immensely positive in a way that most Sci-Fi isn't.

 

I just watched a string of films that no one should:
- Terminator Genisys - It was like listening to a greatest hits album of a band you used to like but the mixing and production has gone to such a level to remove any of the charm, wit or grit from the original tracks. It also doesn't help that the big twist was spoiled by the trailer.

 

- From Paris with Love - I can't tell if Luc Besson is being super racist in this film, ot if it is his scathing satire on American foreign policy. At the time I had no idea what it was about but in this post-Paris attacks period the film is even more crass. John Travolta shows up in the Liam Neeson role of 'minority killer' and proceeds to kill Asians of all types in an attempt to stop some terrorists (he seems to be doing this by shooting anyone that isn't white) in Paris. It is utterly atrocious.

 

- Underworld: Awakening - It was there, it was terrible - I couldn't tell you what happened

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Sleepy Hollow has been cancelled. I'm not caught up so can't speak to the quality of recent seasons but I intended to catch up on it since it's filmed in my town. With the amount of filming being done here now I'm sure some other production will move into town soon. 

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Pitfall (1962) is a really funny and really bleak black comedy about capitalism, in which a migrant worker gets murdered for no reason and, as a ghost, goes back and uncovers why it happened and how the entire system was always set against him. Director Hiroshi Teshigahara is best known for Woman In The Dunes (1964), which is more surreal and esoteric but equally angry and anti-capitalist. This doesn't reach the nightmarish heights of Woman In The Dunes, but it does feel like a better entry point to Teshigahara's style, which is equal parts gorgeous, aggressive, experimental and satirical. 

 

Pitfall sometimes feels somewhere between Steinbeck and The Coen Brothers, and is definitely worth seeing.

 

This trailer makes it seem way more avant-garde than it actually is, but gives a good idea of some of the strange experimental flourishes.

 

 

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Not to be the guy who says Bicycle Thieves (or The Bicycle Thief, sometimes, for a bizarre reason) is a great movie like that's something that needs to be said, but if you haven't seen it it's a completely staggering work. It's basically an entire season of The Wire's worth of urban observation and pathos crammed into 89 minutes through a very simple and emotionally absorbing story. Worth it just for all the location shooting in a remarkable city (Rome) during a remarkable period of time (just after WW2).

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On 5/14/2017 at 0:10 AM, Woodfella said:

Has anyone seen the new  Alien yet? 

 

It's bad.

 

There's a thread for that!

 

 

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The Boxer's Omen is a 1983 Shaw Brothers kung-fu/horror/black magic movie and one of the most wonderfully ludicrous things I've ever seen. The intensity with which it surprised me at every turn, while still being a completely earnest and well-constructed film about religious piety and good vs. evil, was absolutely baffling. It's pretty gross (it comes with the sub-genre of black magic movies), with a lot of bugs and maggots and goop and organs and bodily mutilation, but it all happens on a surreal operatic level that makes it much easier to take.

 

This clip highlights the film's stream of consciousness structure and also it's amazing special effects bugfuckery. I could not recommend The Boxer's Omen more strongly to anyone who has an interest in cult or strange films.

 

 

 

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