Amph What was the last movie you saw?

Interesting tidbit about the Conjuring 2:

The Warrens had nothing to do with the Enfield Poltergeist case. They ended up supplanting the role of Guy Lyon Playfair, who investigated the case alongside Maurice Grosse.

 

Derp double post derp derp

 

Casino

Following the success of Goodfellas, the temptation to create a film that thematically and tonally followed in its wake is understandable. In fact, Casino almost feels like a sequel to Goodfellas despite having almost no relation to the subject matter of that film. Despite this, Casino shares many similarities with Goodfellas including its casting, characterisation, narrative structure, soundtrack, and overall style. Casino feels more like a documentary because of the abundance of narration from its protagonists. While Goodfellas also had narration, Casino's commentary provided by its characters runs throughout the movie which can be at the expense of experiencing the movie scene by scene and investing in the drama. This is why the second half of Casino feels like the stronger half due to the reduced narration where the film's strongest performances are brought to the fore, especially from Sharon Stone.

That's not to say the first half of Casino is weak or underwhelming, but it is at the halfway point that the movie truly comes into its own as a story with its personality in tact. Whereas, Goodfellas did this during its earliest stages. Overall, Casino is the lesser film when compared to Goodfellas but Casino still is an excellent film. The cinematography is stunning, the meticulously handpicked soundtrack (with the usual Scorsese abundance of The Rolling Stones) adds to the story telling, De Niro and Pesci play off one another brilliantly (yet again), while the costume design still looks amazing. De Niro not only wears a different suit from scene to scene, it almost seems he is never seen wearing the same suit twice. Yet, all seem to be fully canvassed, and tailored to his character. The look and artistic style of Casino is timeless, perhaps even moreso than Goodfellas because of the more "polished" finish to the film. Casino very nearly is as strong as Goodfellas but is held back by its three hour length where some character and story investment is lost.

4 out of 5

 

Goodfellas and Casino are my father's two favorite films, and for that reason are a huge point of nostalgia for me as I grew up around these movies.

 

Source Code

 

Ghostbusters (2016)

 

The Purge: Election Year (2016)

Each Purge movie gets better and better. This one kind of transcends its thriller trappings to be a well put-together action flick.

The Legend of Tarzan (2016)

Not the disaster I kept saying it'd be, but it still wasn't very good. It suffers from a sluggish pace, incredibly bland lead, and dodgy CGI. I suppose it's better than the Casper Van Dien flick from 1998. Remember that one?

 

I mean, fair enough. Yeah, the Warrens were total and complete frauds, but you have to buy in on any cinematic premise if you're going with the movie. I mean, any supernatural horror movie you're going into, you have to buy the world of the film and as long as its consistent with itself, I don't have a problem with that. I don't believe in ghosts or vampires or what have you; it doesn't offend me when a fictional movie posits that they're real in the movie. The problem I have with most horror movies is internal inconsistency. A movie gets to set its own rules, in my opinion, but it bugs me when movies (and they are usually horror movies that fall prey to this) are not clear about their own rules or outright contradict them. That's just cheating. I know you said you don't want to talk much more, but I'm curious how you feel about horror films in general. Do you have any favorites?

As to you saying that William isn't failing because of his own flaws, I don't know. That scene where the girl really tears into her dad . . . I read that scene as exactly right. I think he's an incredibly flawed character; I think they all are, but he's the most flawed. I mean, when he tells his son that his little brother is currently roasting in hell, that's not the witches making him do that; it's his own horrible short-comings as a father and a marker of his fanaticism. At the end of the day, he's too fanatical and inflexible for the Puritans. I mean, think about that. And anyway, I don't think the movie is pro-Christianity at all. I feel like the movie posits a world where the Devil exists but God doesn't, as weird as that sounds. I mean, the Christian faith of the family is essentially powerless to protect them or help them at all. I never feel the presence of the Christian God in this movie. Yes, I would agree that it's basically the Christian version of the Devil here, but this is certainly not The Exorcist or anything. This isn't a conflict between good and evil. The people aren't good and God isn't around.

I don't know, I just feel like you're giving the movie the most superficial and literal reading possible. Not to bring up old arguments ( ), but I think this is exactly what you did to Zero Dark Thirty that made you read it as pro-torture. But we can agree to disagree on this one; we've done it on plenty of others. And anyway, ultimately, The Witch is certainly an ambiguous film and it wants to be, so it's going to have even more different interpretations than the average movie, so fair enough. But I am curious as to what other horror movies you might actually like.

 

Who's to say the son isn't, in the movie's universe, actually in hell? Witches exist, Satan exists, so why can't some unbaptized baby be doomed to spend eternity with those lovely folks? See, in the real world, yes, William's beliefs are dumb and his fanaticism moreso. But in a film that insists on presenting the supernatural as factual, I feel any criticism of William falls flat because there is, in fact, something to fear.

Yes, I suppose that interpretation is plausible. I just don't see how it's an argument in the film's defense. "All the evil things imagined by 17th-century Calvinists really do exist, but God is a lie and Jesus is dead and not coming back." That's a whole other level of cynicism, I think, and the reasoning behind such a presentation is not something I understand.

 

It's not really whether or not his son is in hell. It's the fact that he feels okay about telling his other son that he is. I mean, it's the reason Christianity came up with the age of accountability; because no decent person wants to tell people that their dead baby is in hell. But you do make a fair point. I mean, the kid was murdered by a witch after all, so the guy probably deserves some leeway.

No, you're right that it isn't an argument in the film's defense as far as quality goes. I was just making the point that it isn't a film aimed at confirming the beliefs of Christianity. You kind of indicated that it was a Christian fantasy, if I read you correctly, so I was just making the point that I disagree with that reading of it.

As to the reasoning behind creating that world, well, because it's terrifying as **** to contemplate and this is a horror movie? I mean, it's a bleak movie. I feel like there are a lot of movies that have posited a version of this; a world with no heroes and no real goodness, but just villains and evil. They just usually do it less explicitly. Film noir isn't about the absence of God and the existence of the Devil, but it's about evil without much of a counterbalancing force of goodness and decency. It is, on its face, a perfectly valid worldview to put in a work of art, though it can certainly be overdone and just come off as so bleak and cynical as to be cheesy. When done right, it can be satisfying. Mileage varies on when it crosses the line from genuinely bleak to silly though.

P.S. You may note that I absolutely refuse to use that super stylized and quite pretentious "VV" thing. You have rightly mocked that. I don't know if that was a directorial thing or a marketing thing. I forget how the title shows up on screen which would explain if it was the director's idea. Either way, I just don't like titles that do those things. I mean, if that's how you spell it, then you need to pronounce it "vitch." We don't just change the spellings of words willy-nilly because we like the way they look; we spell words the way we do in order to give a guide as to pronunciation. This is why I also hate "Se7en." That one isn't even close. "7" instead of "v?" Really? The one exception to this rule is when (not if) they do a fourth Taken movie. I want that title to be T4ken. Because if ever a movie was so ridiculous it deserved a ridiculous title, it will surely be the fourth Taken movie.

 

Diamonds are Forever. I've previously described this as my least favorite Bond film, but this time I really enjoyed it. I still don't love it, but I think it's a lot better than I've previously given it credit for.

 

Zero Dark Thirty was pro-torture. On the one hand, it made some lady feel bad. Sort of.

On the other, they completely fictionalized it offering a major breakthrough in the investigation, even though it was supposed to be an assiduous reconstruction of actual events. Instead, maybe they should have shown the guy they water boarded over 80 times before realizing he had never even been part of Al-Qaeda.

 

The Sexy Killer (1976) Sun Chung's ode to Pam Grier's Coffy is a hoot. Much fun ensues as Wenfei (Chen Ping) launches a one woman war on drug dealers and the bunk they peddle thanks to her little sister's subsequent brain damage from an o.d.. This hits all the usual sleazy exploitative notes: nudity, drug use, O.T.T. violence, betrayal and campy acting. The nudity felt almost quaint to me (coming from decades of ultra sleazy Italian and American genre films which sometimes left me feeling awful or unclean.) This less sensationalistic feel to the naked lady flesh is a credit to Sun Chung as he plays down this element, despite his full awareness of The Sexy Killer as an exploitation film (yes there's a brief flash of two ladies getting it on to the delight of many male onlookers - but even that seems artificial.) How Sun playfully hides an actresses' full frontal nudity with his inventive shots and directing is fascinating. Sun never goes too far, he'll show just enough graphic violence, nudity or hints of rape, before leaving most to the viewer's imagination. Every Sun Chung film I've seen displays his fondness for crime, heroism, laws and lawlessness and how some are pushed to take the law into their own hands. This was clearly something he felt very comfortable and strongly about and I love that he approached this in so many different ways.

To remind you this is simply a movie, the sets and costumes are colorful in only the way Shaw Brothers movies can be. I think many Shaws directors deployment of garish color both for wuxia and 'current' films like this one really helped make the stories seem hyper real and definitely of their time. Sun's influences felt Italian to me (I definitely see spaghetti westerns and Mario Bava) and even though this film directly lifts the Coffy storyline, it still has some of Bava's black humored playfulness and awesome color palettes running through it. Some of the almost psychedelic opening nightclub scene would feel right at home in Danger Diabolik.

As for the lead Chen Ping, she's just hilariously over-earnest in doing her best Pam Grier imitation. Where you could 100% believe in Pam and that world (since it reflected a lot of what was going on in many cities here), this unreal take is a neat tip of the big, floppy hat. I haven't quite understood the appeal of 60s - 70s Shaws leading man Yuen Hua but he makes a decent "good" cop (The Drug Smasher) in a film fill of corrupt police, drug dealers and scum aplenty.

I'll pick this up if Celestial release it digitally. It's one of Sun's most spare, simple films in every way. And it's fun in spite of what it is. The more I see of Sun Chung's output, the more impressed I am. He's quickly becoming my go to director as Carpenter was in my teens and twenties.

 

I finally got round to watching The Martian, having read the book and even listened to the audiobook (thanks, youtube) and it's pretty damned good. Ridley Scott doing scifi properly. No crap looking CGI in sight, the Martian landscape was stunning and the models/vehicles, sets, costumes, everything was so good, even.... Matt ****ing Damon, who tends to be hammy and can drag a good film down to mediocrity, but he was superb in this.

I'm not too sure about the international crowds and ticker tape scenes, there must have been some other way of putting over the idea that the world was watching that wasn't such a feel-good movie cliche, but overall it worked, it was fun and it did make me feel good, so job's a goodun our Ridley.

 

Monkey Kung Fu (1979) Lo Mar's breezy tale about a son's efforts to wreak vengeance over the opposing Gibbons Fist clan who murdered his pop in a death duel. While said son is not in the film all that much, the two scenes where he busts out the shaolin staff are truly some of the most amazing pole weapons stylings I've seen in any action film, much less martial arts. I was a fan of Kwan Fung prior to this movie, but now that I've seen what he was capable of with weapons, geez, I want as much of his weapons work as I can get. Like Chu Ko before him, Kwan is one of those Operatic Shaws performers who are not only better than the original Venoms Opera fellas in their martial and acrobatic ability, but acting too (yes, that includes Lu Feng who still delights me to no end.) I see this stuff now and think, sheesh, what amazing Jedi and Sith some of these folks would have been.

The two leads aren't all that charismatic or interesting, but their fight styles are worth seeing. Watching them go at it and slowly learn the Gibbons Fist style was entertaining, making up for the fact that neither of these two are half the actors Kwan Fung is, but their agility is comparable to his so I can forgive that major faux pas. One of the things I love about Shaw Brothers movies is noticing someone's skills and then going back and rewatching movies this person appeared in. Spot this person makes each revisit new and gives me something different to discover and enjoy, even in a film I've watched dozens of times already.

 

'71. A tense, dark thriller about a British soldier stranded in Irish-Catholic Belfast overnight, it's pretty gripping. The tension doesn't let up, and it does a pretty great job of handling the conflict of the setting, seeing ugliness on both sides without being afraid to sympathize with a British soldier. It goes a little too cynical in the end, but it's ultimately more interested in the disorienting madness of the trapped-in-a-society-that's-turned-itself-into-a-war-zone hook than in being a political film. Jack O'Connell is great as the lead; I think he's really going places. I'm less in love with Yann Demange's direction; he's overly fond of shaky handheld shots that get in the way more than they communicate anything. But it is his debut, so I'll cut him a little slack, and the movie's very good anyway.

 

The Four Feathers, one of the greatest epics ever made.​

 

Which version? The 1939 film is the best version as far as I'm concerned.

 

Sentimental Swordsman (1977) Another Chor Yuen - Ti Lung - Gu Long roadblock, that is beloved by many, but I can't say I am one of those folks. The title character is fingered for the theft of sacred scrolls, but most of the cast are sleep walking something fierce. Ti Lung, who can ably carry a film on his mighty shoulders, does what he can here but it is not enough.
I will probably pick up the sequel just because, but I am glad I bought the SD version of this.

 

Mulholland Falls. As far as nineties neo-noir goes, it's no L.A. Confidential. It's got a respectable cast, but it's stuck trying to get by on period atmosphere and attitude, neither of which it does particularly well, because the script isn't much and Lee Tamahori's direction is nothing to write home about. There are a couple good ideas, bits of solid banter, a good sequence or two, and man oh man is Jennifer Connelly beautiful, but the film just lacks energy. It just kind of meanders along through a mystery that would be a lot more interesting if the film seemed more interested in it and less interested in Nick Nolte moping around and growling at people. There's the basis of a good movie here, but Tamahori doesn't get one out of it. It's not bad, it's just kind of . . . there.

 

Ronin

Ronin feels like the 1990s James Bond film that was never made. That is, a cynical spy film with plot twists and close quarters action as opposed to the large explosive spectacle that was common to the genre during the aforementioned decade. Although produced by United Artists, Frankenheimer's film has the feel of an independent movie because of its use of handheld camera, dim lighting and gritty settings. Keeping in mind that Ronin was made prior to any of the Bourne films or Michael Mann's Collateral where this technique of filmmaking would become more prevalent during the early 2000s. This is why Ronin can be thought of as being quite a daring film for its day because audiences were gravitating toward the likes of John Woo, Quentin Tarantino or even Ronald Emmerich for action films where there was a typically slick style.

Much like the cinematography and overall direction, Ronin also has an intimacy in the way nearly all characters (save Sean Bean's role) have an understated nuance. This is an important factor to note because it is the opaque motivations of the film which keep the chase throughout Ronin thrilling. But, as a weak point, sometimes Ronin plays the spy game a little too close to its chest by blatantly refusing to answer questions to reflect the code by which the players abide. Though it it true to form, there are moments where the film has the proclivity to fall into the "too bad" rather than "keep guessing" mindset when needing the necessary answers to form certain connections. Though, the vagueness is never at the expense of the story and is more stylistic than it is substantial to the overall scope of the film. The performances are terrific where De Niro and Reno play off one another while McElhone wonderfully wears her poker face throughout the film. Additionally, Jonathan Pryce is a very worthy gamester and manipulator. Overall, there are many strengths in the pacing, performances, writing and action to Ronin to make the film timeless.

4 out of 5

 

Ronin is a very good film. Except for the addition of Sean Bean's character, which makes no sense whatsoever.

I really struggle with this film, I used to really like it when I was younger, I think because it was Connery. But now I've changed my mind. This is when the laughs started to become more prominent. I also never understood why they re-used Charles Gray when he'd only appeared in a Bond film less than 5 years previous as another character.

 

I love the inclusion of Sean Bean's character.

What doesn't make sense, if you don't mind explaining?