Film Review Thread

[thechubbyone]

As there's a decent discussion going on the Damned United thread I thought it was about time we got a general film thread going. Post the last film(s) you've seen and give a brief opinion.

Name: Bronson
Seen at/on: Cinema
Score: 5/10
I went to see it after the cinema website had fucked up and displayed the wrong times for the film I actually wanted to see. It turned out to be reasonable enough, if a bit cringe worthy in points. I'd not bother wasting your money to see it, but I suppose if it's on itv4 one afternoon in a few years time it would be worth an hour and half of your time.

Name: The Escapist
Seen at/on: DVD
Score: 7/10
I mainly got this as it's filmed at Kilmainham Gaol where I recently visited, but it turned out to be quite a decent watch. Basic plot is that a bloke serving life in prison wants to get out as his daughter is ill and he needs to see her to make things right so he plans to escape.... pretty standard fare really, but I liked the way it was done. I found the jail scenes fairly unbelievable given the amount of freedom the prisoners seem to have, but then the whole thing has a slightly make believe feel to it, so it does at least have an internal logic to pin it together.

[col]

Name : The Boy in Striped Pyjamas
Seen on DVD
Score 6/10

Had been recommended to me, Son of SS Kamp Kommandant befriends similar aged work camp jewish chap, Hun doesnt want to move away after his mum calls his old man a murdering cunt. Cue arrangement for Hun to change into workcamp clothes as he believed propaganda that the jews sat around played all day and were treated at the cafeteria.

Kamp guards then herd all hut jews (including young Heinrich) into a windowless room and test out some Zyclon B.

You can see it coming, but I suppose i've spoilt it for you now.

[FarmersBoy]

Name :Slumdog Millionaire
at Cinema
8/10


About aSlum Dweller in Mumbia India who wins their version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire.
The Police think because he grew up in poverty cheated to win.
Superb Male /Female leads, I personally think it was wrong to use actual Slum Children to make the film
Having holidayed in India the past 4 years this film is very very true to life.
The cast portrayed the life of the slum children very well.
The poverty and corruption is so lifelike as well, ! ! ! IT DOES GO ON BELIEVE ME FOLKS ! ! !
I question the orphanage scene as the one I work voluntaraly in when there has high standard.
Not the usual bog standard Bollywood film with the singing and dancing. Very Amusing as well
If your thinking of going on holiday there see the film better than any tourist programme

[SimonB]

Reader
Cinema

8/10

Young lad has affair with older woman not knowing of her nazi prison guard past. She makes him read to her as she loves stories. After the affair ends he becomes law student and ends up at her court case where she is accused of murdering hundreds of jews by letting them die in a locked church rather than letting them go. She is convicted and sentenced to a long prison sentence for writing the orders on how to explain all the deaths. He realises that she cant read or write and therefore was not totally responsible for the deaths and to help her prison sentence he records books and using these she teaches herself to read and write. When she is due to be released he is the only person she has any contact with and although he wants to help (difficult decision for him) she commits suicide the day before she was due to be released.

The main thing that struck me about this film is that you end up feeling sympathy for a nazi prison guard, particularly when the judge was coming down on how she chose those who were to die and those who would live, she asked "what would you have done?". Well what would you have done in those circumstances ?

[TommyT]

DEATHPROOF 8/10
DVD

You absolutely have to rent it!
Tarantino "Grindhouse" movie in which Kurt Russell plays an aged stuntman who gets his kicks from killing red hot young dirty girls in his highly modified cars. But the tables can turn ....
Great soundtrack. Great filming. Very funny.

Watchmen 9/10
iMax Cinema

Its the 1970's, and masked Superheroes walk amongst the normal residents of America. The destruction of the world by nuclear war is threatened. Who can save the planet ....
Stunning filmwork. Killer soundtrak.

[dirty leeds]

Monsters Vs Aliens

Kids' cartoon about a bunch of monsters tackling some aliens. They win. 3D version is fun, although not as hard to swallow as Splattercock: Cumgun 2. Bit frustrating when the bird grows in size that her clothes also grow in size with her. But the kids loved it. I laughed twice: once at the film, once at the price of Ben & Jerry's.

[SimonB]

Name : The Boy in Striped Pyjamas
Seen on DVD
Score 6/10

Had been recommended to me, Son of SS Kamp Kommandant befriends similar aged work camp jewish chap, Hun doesnt want to move away after his mum calls his old man a murdering cunt. Cue arrangement for Hun to change into workcamp clothes as he believed propaganda that the jews sat around played all day and were treated at the cafeteria.

Kamp guards then herd all hut jews (including young Heinrich) into a windowless room and test out some Zyclon B.

You can see it coming, but I suppose i've spoilt it for you now.

It is a very good film, yes it was fairly obvious but still a good watch

[Blackwhite]

3D version is fun, although not as hard to swallow as Splattercock: Cumgun 2.

What, no review?

[gazlufc]

Traitor
Seen on DVD
8/10

Cracking film about a former US soldier(a mussie),whos selling bomb detonators to extremists,while the
FBI and CIA try and catch him.Lots of explosions and swearing so you have to be 18!!!

X-Men Origins:Wolverine
Seen on (Classified)
4/10

Seen all the X-men films and this is the shittest by far.
Just tells the tale of killing the guy who topped his bird.

[LSD&2Es]

Your Mum, sucking off a Donkey

1/10 - She was shit - didn't even swallow, Now Fuck off to Waccoe!!

[Dale White]

Deliverance 9/10,ITV tonight @ 11.35.
I know every fucker has seen it at least 3 times but it's a superb film.

[FER]

Scar 3D
DVD
6/10

Brief: Chick goes back to her home town, ends up being chased by psycho slasher killer, in 3D

Verdict: The 3D was shit, may be better on 47" Plasma, but no colour and ruined the film for me. Watch it in 2D, you won't miss much on the effects side. Film itself was okay, watchable but nowhere near the best in it's genre. Watched this on the back of seeing:

My Bloody Valentine 3D
Cinema
8/10

Brief: Bloke comes back to his home town 10 years after disappearing after psycho slasher killer does some murders in his dad's mineshaft. Ex missus is shacked up with old mate who's now sherrif, still wants to bang her.

Verdict: Seeing this in the cinema, the 3D was very good. The storyline was easy to follow but there wasn't really a 'shock' 3D moment. Best part was the old lawman swinging his shotgun out at the audience, lots of people ducked (although the naked hooker scene was quite good (mmm, 3D boobs!))! Will probably suck like Scar on DVD with 3D.

[Krumpli]

Storm Over Asia
Cinema
9/10

The other night, I was lucky enough to see an as-yet unreleased definitive version of Vsevolod Pudovkin's 1928 silent epic which is driven via war and celebrity in revolutionary Mongolia towards an extraordinary climax by an at times head-splitting score by Tuvan throat-singing punks, Yat-Kha.

Oh, yes.

[Patrick-Hong Kong]

Storm Over Asia
Cinema
9/10

The other night, I was lucky enough to see an as-yet unreleased definitive version of Vsevolod Pudovkin's 1928 silent epic which is driven via war and celebrity in revolutionary Mongolia towards an extraordinary climax by an at times head-splitting score by Tuvan throat-singing punks, Yat-Kha.

Oh, yes.

Sounds good. I like these earky Russian revolutionary films and one of the best I've seen is 'Earth' by Dovzenkho. I'm not sure about the choice of soundtrack though, I'm not really up on these 'Baz Luuurman' type cultural collages!

[Krumpli]

Sounds good. I like these earky Russian revolutionary films and one of the best I've seen is 'Earth' by Dovzenkho. I'm not sure about the choice of soundtrack though, I'm not really up on these 'Baz Luuurman' type cultural collages!

I know as little about Russian revolutionary films as I do about throat-singing, but it didn't half rattle two and half hours along.

I suppose these things just click into place sometimes; like when Cinematic Orchestra performed a live score to Vertov's 'Man With a Movie Camera' in a disused Odeon in Newcastle a few years ago. And didn't Asian Dub Foundation once do 'Battle of Algiers'? I'd love to have seen that. Now there's a fucking film.

[Patrick-Hong Kong]

Sounds good. I like these earky Russian revolutionary films and one of the best I've seen is 'Earth' by Dovzenkho. I'm not sure about the choice of soundtrack though, I'm not really up on these 'Baz Luuurman' type cultural collages!

I know as little about Russian revolutionary films as I do about throat-singing, but it didn't half rattle two and half hours along.

I suppose these things just click into place sometimes; like when Cinematic Orchestra performed a live score to Vertov's 'Man With a Movie Camera' in a disused Odeon in Newcastle a few years ago. And didn't Asian Dub Foundation once do 'Battle of Algiers'? I'd love to have seen that. Now there's a fucking film.

I've got 'Man with a movie camera' in my collection, it's excellent.
Newcastle is a good place to see film, when I was there studying Fine Art I saw a couple of silent films with accompanying orchestra - the best being Abel Gance's 'Napoleon'. It featured 3 screens side by side with action rolling from one to the next, decades ahead of it's time and for the finale the screens were tinted in the colours of the French flag. Amazing technically.

I've also got the 1925 version of Ben Hur, that's a cracker! (It's actually this film that caused the death of the extra, not the Charleton Heston version).

[eric olthwaite]

And didn't Asian Dub Foundation once do 'Battle of Algiers'? I'd love to have seen that. Now there's a fucking film.

I'm a complete fuck-up on booking stuff in the Brighton Festival in time and I always miss out.

ADF did do The Battle of Algiers live for that, though I think they've also performed it elsewhere. I'm told it was brilliant.

The other one in the Festival which I missed, and which I heard was fantastic, was a showing of Battleship Potemkin in the Engineerium. It's an old water works which is now a museum of static steam engines and the like.
They showed the film with a live brass band accompaniment and a couple of steam engines thumping away in the background - the smell of grease and steam drifting across the screen etc. Utter fucking genius.

[eric olthwaite]

Bicycle Thieves by Vittorio De Sica
9/10

50's Italian neo-realist film I saw in a indie cinema recently. When you see a totally captivating 50 year-old film, about a bloke who gets his bike nicked and goes looking for it, and it puts 99% of current Hollywood output to shame, you really do start to wonder if Western art culture is dead & finished.

[Blackwhite]

When you see a totally captivating 50 year-old film, about a bloke who gets his bike nicked and goes looking for it, and it puts 99% of current Hollywood output to shame, you really do start to wonder if Western art culture is dead & finished.

No, just contemporary mainstream American art & culture - cannibal holocaust is the policy, not the movie.

[Patrick-Hong Kong]

Bicycle Thieves by Vittorio De Sica
9/10

50's Italian neo-realist film I saw in a indie cinema recently. When you see a totally captivating 50 year-old film, about a bloke who gets his bike nicked and goes looking for it, and it puts 99% of current Hollywood output to shame, you really do start to wonder if Western art culture is dead & finished.

De Sica is superb. If you get the chance to see 'Miracle in Milan' or 'Umberto D' don't miss out!