Last film watched

[paddy no 11]

District 9

Brilliant

[Numbers]

The Peanut Butter Falcon on Netflix, this is a feeelgood film and I found it quite charming.

[Mikey Brown]

The Peanut Butter Falcon on Netflix, this is a feeelgood film and I found it quite charming.

Just watched this last night actually. I really enjoyed everything with the two main characters but there was some absurdly hacky story/writing crow-barred in around them. Very strange third act but I did enjoy it overall.

[Which Tyler]

Trial of the Chicago 7
Very good, and I'm sure deliberately reflective of more recent demonstrations

[Puja]

The Man Who Crossed Hitler - Part 1, Part 2

BBC film about a real life incident in 1931 (two years before the beginning of the Third Reich), where a lawyer, Hans Litten, subpoenaed Hitler and called him as a witness in the trial for murder and street violence of SA men. At the time, Hitler was trying to present himself as a responsible mature politician to get as many rich industrialists and centrists to back him as the "strong leader that Germany needed" who would end the ineffectual Reichstag bickering and curb the street violence, while at the same time keeping the support of the thugs and racists (and deplorables) who were his base and whose violence was keeping his "law and order" schtick relevant. Litten was aiming to cross-examine Hitler and publically question him in an arena where he didn't control the microphone, where he couldn't speechify and tirade, where he was bound by a previous promise under oath that the Nazi party had disavowed violence (and thus the risk of perjury and imprisonment/deportation to Austria) while still keeping blowing the whistle for his base.

It's a fascinating and brilliantly done piece, made better by the fact practically none of it is fiction. A lot of the courtroom dialogue is taken from actual records and to see the systematic dismantling of the ideologue, forced to explain his contradictions and lies in a forum where he has no control, is a thing of beauty. Of course, in real life, we know the end of the story - even when faced with the ugly truth of who he was, enough people were willing to ignore the racism, the violence, the divisiveness, the facism, because they wanted a strong leader, someone who upset the libs and got things done and made Germany grea... fixed their country. Litten cross-examined Hitler three hours, humiliated him, and thereafter nobody was allowed to mention his name in Hitler's presence. But he refused to leave the country when he had the chance ("The millions of workers can't leave here, so I must stay too") and was one of the first to be arrested upon Hitler's ascension, eventually committing suicide in 1938 in Dachau concentration camp.

If it wasn't made in 2011, I'd've taken it as a powerful sermon against current events, both here and America. The fact that it is so applicable (the line about Germany needing a strong man to cut through all the arguing in Parliament and get things done made me wince) is a castigation of where the world has gone. Depressing, but a very good watch.

Puja

[Mikey Brown]

The Hunt, which was really incredible. Tough to watch at times but gripping and sad and thought-provoking all at once. Not seen Mads Mikkelson in much before and he was pretty fantastic.

[morepork]

The Hunt, which was really incredible. Tough to watch at times but gripping and sad and thought-provoking all at once. Not seen Mads Mikkelson in much before and he was pretty fantastic.

He is a great actor.

[paddy no 11]

The Hunt, which was really incredible. Tough to watch at times but gripping and sad and thought-provoking all at once. Not seen Mads Mikkelson in much before and he was pretty fantastic.

Pretty grim viewing

TBH if the lead wasn't so good i'm not sure i would have stuck with it

[fivepointer]

Open Range.
Handsome looking western, very well made film.
Kevin Costner very good, no really. But Robert Duvall stole all the scenes he was in. Great actor.

[Son of Mathonwy]

Parasite

Bizarre that this was so successful at the Oscars, but it's very good.

(Spoilers) I thought the freeloading Kims were going to destroy the Parks and take over their lives but the film went off in some unpredictable directions, humanising the Kims in the process, and raising the level of the film beyond a horror story for the upper middle classes. For me the biggest fault is that the Parks were reasonably nice people, if a little snobbish. Better if they had more clearly been shown to be parasites in their own way.

[Mikey Brown]

Parasite

Bizarre that this was so successful at the Oscars, but it's very good.

(Spoilers) I thought the freeloading Kims were going to destroy the Parks and take over their lives but the film went off in some unpredictable directions, humanising the Kims in the process, and raising the level of the film beyond a horror story for the upper middle classes. For me the biggest fault is that the Parks were reasonably nice people, if a little snobbish. Better if they had more clearly been shown to be parasites in their own way.

► Show Spoiler

Isn’t that part it though? They don’t have to be evil people to play their part. They can just accept their status as a better class of human, and as long as those beneath them keep viewing each-other as the enemies they’ll always remain the parasites.

[Son of Mathonwy]

Parasite

Bizarre that this was so successful at the Oscars, but it's very good.

(Spoilers) I thought the freeloading Kims were going to destroy the Parks and take over their lives but the film went off in some unpredictable directions, humanising the Kims in the process, and raising the level of the film beyond a horror story for the upper middle classes. For me the biggest fault is that the Parks were reasonably nice people, if a little snobbish. Better if they had more clearly been shown to be parasites in their own way.

► Show Spoiler

Isn’t that part it though? They don’t have to be evil people to play their part. They can just accept their status as a better class of human, and as long as those beneath them keep viewing each-other as the enemies they’ll always remain the parasites.

► Show Spoiler

Too subtle for me! It seems unbalanced - the Kims were a scheming bunch of freeloaders with some (but not many) redeeming features whereas the Parks were quite nice, if snobbish/sheltered. Perhaps if Mr Parks' job was obviously exploiting the poor.....

[paddy no 11]

Rosemarys baby - quality psychological horror........shame it's polanski

[paddy no 11]

Tenet - no, just can't take anymore Nolan - having to spend hours to work out who, was, what, where, and when does not make a good film

[Son of Mathonwy]

Tenet - no, just can't take anymore Nolan - having to spend hours to work out who, was, what, where, and when does not make a good film

Thought Tenet was great! Really interesting idea. Obviously it can't really work, but it's a crazy and mind-stretching film.

[Son of Mathonwy]

The Matrix 4. They put a lot of work into it, it's not terrible ... but they really shouldn't have made this. I'm not against the idea of adding to the trilogy, but it adds nothing.

[Son of Mathonwy]

Don't Look Up. An excellent satire. It's not non-stop gags but it is amusing. Also thought-provoking and frighteningly plausible. Don't believe the critics, they seemed to have been expecting a screwball comedy.

[Donny osmond]

Don't look up is a good film to kill a quiet Sunday night. Funny and biting satire.

The latest Spiderman is a genuinely great film and really rescues Marvel phase 4 which has been increasingly shit up until Spidey.

Red Notice with The Rock and Ryan Reynolds has been panned by critics and rotten tomatoes but it doesn't deserve all that. It's daft, sure, and the actors are never going to win awards, but it's good daft and entertaining and I would definitely recommend if you have kids that need entertained for a couple of hours.

Sent from my CPH2195 using Tapatalk

[cashead]

Took advantage of the Disney+ to watch:

Black Widow - better than I thought it would be and much more substance than anticipated

Shang-Chi - eh

Also braved the cinemas to watch:

No Time To Die - loved it
Dune - stop stop I can only get so erect

Also VPN+Shudder to watch:
Gongjiam: Haunted Asylum - it's alright

Also V/H/S/94 - not as good as the original, better then V/H/S/2 and just makes V/H/s/Viral look like an even bigger turd.

[Puja]

Took advantage of the Disney+ to watch:

Black Widow - better than I thought it would be and much more substance than anticipated

Shang-Chi - eh

Also braved the cinemas to watch:

No Time To Die - loved it
Dune - stop stop I can only get so erect

Also VPN+Shudder to watch:
Gongjiam: Haunted Asylum - it's alright

Also V/H/S/94 - not as good as the original, better then V/H/S/2 and just makes V/H/s/Viral look like an even bigger turd.

I quite enjoyed Shang Chi. I mean, it wasn't outstanding, but it was a perfectly entertaining example of the genre. I would've put it a similar sort of level as Black Widow and without the distraction of Ray Winstone doing a "Russian" accent.

Dune was good then? I'm always nervous about adaptations of books I like, but the casting for it was so perfect that I worry they had probes in my head to get what I think the characters look like. Didn't manage to get out to the cinema though with plague et al.

Puja

[cashead]

Yeah, I really enjoyed Dune. Keep in mind though, that it's only the first half of the novel adapted, so don't expect to see Feyd-Rautha, Princess Irulan or Alia Atreides at any point.

[Puja]

Yeah, I really enjoyed Dune. Keep in mind though, that it's only the first half of the novel adapted, so don't expect to see Feyd-Rautha, Princess Irulan or Alia Atreides at any point.

I'd heard that and thought it a really good decision by Villeneuve - the book's just too long to fit into one film unless you go LotR extended-edition style and have a 4.5 hour cut.

Puja

[Mikey Brown]

I thought it was unbelievably boring, but I haven't read the books. People I know who have liked it though, so I guess watch it?

Just be ready for Hans Zimmer Hans Zimmering over like 98% of the film.

[Son of Mathonwy]

Dune is very good. The kind of grown-up sci fi we don't often get.

It's mostly faithful to the book (as far as I remember). On the negative side, it doesn't seem colourful enough, somehow. Certainly more drab-looking than Lynch's effort. And (as in the book) the story gets a bit slow in the middle (ie the second half of this film).

[Mikey Brown]

Wow. If you thought the previous fifteen Batman movies were dumb…