What film did you watch last night?

[PC777]

I finally watched Blues Brother 2000. After it got universally panned on release and being a big fan of Blues Brothers since the 80's, I avoided it, but I ended up watching this on Amazon Prime last night mostly in the background out of boredom and not finding anything else.

The movie story parts are basically bad and the addition of a kid Blues Brother does nothing for it, but I did still enjoy some of the musical parts including a number of appearances of now dead legends including BB King, Aretha Franklin and James Brown. Also a blues supergroup at the end with some pretty good guitar from Eric Clapton. John Goodman could be a good Blues Brother but they handle it clumsily overall.

It's as bad as they say, but still with some decent musical parts along with circa 2000 and old music legends nostalgia to boot.

Worth watching for a Blues Brothers fan even if just out of curiosity at how bad it is.

 

[Junglist]

Watched Bloodshot the other night. 5/10. Bang average but about the norm for Vinny.

How some actors are able to steal such a good living without actually being able to act amazes me. I feel Vin Diesel literally just puts on a white vest and that's his acting done for the day

 

[arc@css]

Color Out of Space. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5073642/

Good film. Some truly strange and creepy moments (lovers of films like Hereditary should enjoy this).


Resident Evil: Retribution. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1855325/

I thought I'd seen all of the RE films but apparently not. I always take them for what they are which is enjoyable enough entertainment, IMO. Worth a one-off viewing.

 

[Hades]

1917
Superb. 8/10
A British WW1 Saving Private Ryan which I actually felt more connected with.

 

[Efour]

Missbehaviour.

Keira Knightly, can't spell her name, and a group of women's liberation babes fight against the patriarchy and disrupt the 1970 miss world competition. True story!

It sounded like a nightmare but it never got preachy or rammed it down your throat which for a BBC film surprised me.

Well worth a watch if you have 90 mins to kill.

 

[Nitefly]

Candyman (1992)

A horror film probably most remembered for its ‘hook-handed’ slasher villain, but there is a lot going on here that’s of note.

Going to tag @arc@css and @SixTwoSix (horror club 4eva ) to say it’s worthy of a watch and I’m interested for your thoughts. Will put my own thoughts in spoilers though so it doesn’t colour your views if you haven’t seen it recently.

Spoiler

We have a typical (albeit fairly slow) set-up that ramps up unexpectedly into a surreal ‘decent to madness’ affair. That plot arc alone, and the fate of the lead actress, is very unusual in a perceived ‘popcorn horror’ like this but there are a few other things that make this interesting:

- The ghetto / projects / black community setting. I’m not aware of any other horror like this and it’s interesting to see characters discussing urban legends in this context.

- The romancing by Candyman himself. He’s really rather ‘seductive’ isn’t he? He sucks our lead in with a dark and unexpectedly romantic hypnosis, half in the sense of traditional romance and have in the sense of the glory of immortality.

- The dreamlike vibe. Quite deliberately, I think, things end up half-explained, as if it were all a dream that you can’t quite remember. It avoids detailed backstory and explanation. I’m not sure whether I actually like this, but it does add to the uniqueness of the cocktail.

Other things of note: the first half of the film does have quite a few ‘false scares’ (very much out of fashion now, rightly so) but the gore (specifically the ‘blood’) is then quite abundant when it gets going. The horror imagery is also good and memorable, particularly ‘hook hand’ and the ‘bee kiss’. There is also a cool image of graffiti that unfortunately comes back too many times and becomes overused.

The soundtrack is also striking and very memorable, clashing hard with concepts of ‘the ghetto’ and adding to the dreamlike vibe.

All of this said, it doesn’t translate to the film being great. It never really feels like it excels at any particular thing and can’t quite make its mind up whether it wants to be a fun slasher story or a brooding spooker, missing the peaks of both sub-genres. But it remains memorable for merely attempting its strange blend.

Finally, it’s hard to not watch the film with 2020 eyes on and think about issues of race and how it addresses those issues. Racism and deprived communities is obviously a theme of the film and it largely succeeds in dealings with this. It does feel slightly awkward at times in having an attractive, naive white female lead and, separately, then having the entire ‘black community’ arriving at the funeral, for some reason. But to some extent that’s just an artefact of the plot and modern day sensitives.

On the basis of solely how unusual/interesting the film is: 8/10

Based on raw enjoyment / standard film ratings: 6.5/10

 

[nands]

Jay and Silent Bob Reboot - I think that if you hadn't been a fan of Kevin Smith's early films then this would be a complete mess and mean nothing. As a long time fan it was a mess that meant something! 3/5

 

[arc@css]

@Nitefly Cheers, I may well check out Candyman tonight. I think I may have seen it many yarns ago but I can't be sure about that.

 

[cheesyboy]

Candyman is great, from what I remember when I watched it about 20 years ago.

There's a reboot coming soon. Trailer looks pretty good.

Watched Foxy Brown, a 70's blaxploitation movie starring Pam Grier.

Was pretty good, enjoyed it. Pam Grier was quite the woman in the 70s! Plan on watching a few more Grier movies.

Carried on with Pam Grier - watched The Arena. A low budget Spartacus type thing. Some nice 70s nudity, and I quite enjoyed the first half, but the second half was crap.

 

[Flibster]

Was flicking through Sky last night, decided on Coming to America. Love that film.

Shame that Eddie decided that he didn't want to do comedy or good films anymore.

Got A Beautiful Day In The Neighbourhood downloading now. Looks an interesting film. Never really seen any Mister Rodgers as UK, but yeah. I'll give it a go.

 

[steve5424]

Was flicking through Sky last night, decided on Coming to America. Love that film.

Shame that Eddie decided that he didn't want to do comedy or good films anymore.

Got A Beautiful Day In The Neighbourhood downloading now. Looks an interesting film. Never really seen any Mister Rodgers as UK, but yeah. I'll give it a go.

Well Coming 2 America is out later this year so we'll have to see if he can pull off going back to comdey/the character.

 

[Nabeshogun]

Candyman is great, from what I remember when I watched it about 20 years ago.

There's a reboot coming soon. Trailer looks pretty good.

Been quite a while since I've seen it either, was one of those late night Channel 4 kinda movies, I think I'd heard people talk about it a ton before I actually saw it ... I don't remember it being scary at all though, more kinda, silly, though that's not quite the right word but I can't think of the right one.

 

[ianh]

Palm Springs - 2/10 - Andy Samberg & Cristin Milioti in a "Groundhog Day" style movie. It's got a few good scenes of gross-out/"adult" humour but it's basically crap. I like Milioti so was hoping for more but it's basically a Samberg-centric film with the same character Samberg always plays regardless of TV/Film doing the same Samberg stuff to a script that was written using Hollywood's unimaginatively basic "paint by numbers" book of script writing (I guessed the entire movie within minutes).

There no life in this film, no journey, nothing at all, just a few sex jokes mated to a utterly derivative story which seems to have been written with zero passion for story-telling.

If Hollywood truly does die off to Covid then the death of movies like these will make it worth it.

 

[Nabeshogun]

Palm Springs - 2/10 - Andy Samberg & Cristin Milioti.

I like both the actors myself and found it an enjoyable enough thing to have on (though I rarely watch TV, movies and stuff as the sole thing my attention is focused on so might be less discerning) ... you're right about it being rather predictable but I still found it had it's own charm and was glad to have stumbled across it.

 

[nands]

It: Chapter Two - great casting and effects but overall not as satisfying as the first part. 3/5

 

[Deleted member 77746]

The Banker on Apple TV+

Was a good watch about racism in black/white communities where white had an unfair advantage in the money world.

 

[FoxEye]

Roman J Israel Esquire - zzzzz/10

A film about lawyers. I think I made it to around 1/2-way through before I fell asleep.

A lawyer of conscience and belief in just cause decides that just causes don't pay enough, and starts to prioritise making money like all the others. And bores the **** out of the audience in the process. The other lawyers are grotesquely rich and intolerable.

Jackie Brown - 7/10

A good Tarantino film. One I enjoyed a lot more than I expected. At 3h run time it's a little on the long side, but entertaining throughout. Almost everybody is a scumbag, of course (it's a Tarantino film).

 

[crazy8s]

Not a film but watched the documentary 'The Social Dilemma'. Thought it was a good insight into our addiction to social media.

 

[Merlin5]

The Greatest Showman. 9/10.
Didn't realise I knew so many of the songs. Hugh Jackman is just excellent. A lovely rags to riches feel good musical. Less than 60% on Rotten Tomatoes, what a bunch of miserable critics.

Detroit another 9/10.
Really intense movie, unbelievable police brutality,

 

[Yaayuh!]

Annihilation
4/10

Interesting but terribly made. Natalie Portman must've needed the money.
I really wish somebody who knew what they were doing picked this up, it could have been great.