Film/moving picture show you most recently watched

[PaddockLad 17281]

Saw Two Days in New York earlier......it was very funny, if a bit sappy...Julie Delpy wrote,directed and starred in it...basically its an old fashioned "farce" which she did very well..Chris Rock as the "straight man" was good too.

 

Had to go 30 miles to see it... I live in a conurbation of almost a quarter of a million people and its got a dozen or so picture houses but had to go to Southampton to watch it...Mrs PL was also able to indulge in credit card abuse in the swanky shopping centre nearby so it wasnt just a journey to watch a film but I cant work out why it wasnt shown round here...fair enough its not a multiplex type "blockbuster" but theres 3 or 4 arty screens round here too but none of them had it on...would it be a "first weekend" limited release thing?...

[Barney 0]

Went to see Terminator 2 in the cinema yesterday as part of the action classics range.

 

Brilliant.

Edited May 21, 2012 by Barney

[angrysteve 0]

The Raid. 90 mins of of total carnage. The story is anorexically thin and cliched and despite the fact I don't understand whatever language they were talking you could tell the acting was gash, however the action choreography is absolutely amazing and it was an extremely enjoyable film. I'd suggest if you don't like violence & bloodshed to give this one a miss...7.5/10

Edited May 21, 2012 by angrysteve

[Dr Gloom 21925]

The iron lady - streep did a canny impression but i thought the film spent way too long on her dementia and not enough looking at thatcherism and what it did to the country.

[Happy Face 29]

The Raid. 90 mins of of total carnage. The story is anorexically thin and cliched and despite the fact I don't understand whatever language they were talking you could tell the acting was gash, however the action choreography is absolutely amazing and it was an extremely enjoyable film. I'd suggest if you don't like violence & bloodshed to give this one a miss...7.5/10

 

Peter Bradshaw at the Guardian gave it 5 stars, and he's a reet snob who won't usually give a film 5 stars unless it looks into his soul and reveals truths about himself he wasn't aware of....

 

This violent, intense and brilliant bulletfest from Indonesia puts western action movies to shame

 

It was in a delicate, almost feathery mood that I sat down to watch this film: apparently set in Indonesia, probably an evanescent arthouse piece, and called, The Rain, was it … ? Perhaps it would soothe my working London commuter's cares like a cup of elusively scented herbal tea. Perhaps there would be unhurried shots of treetops languidly disturbed by evening breezes, of skies on which mysterious cloudshapes would be inscribed, lakes whose surfaces would be disturbed by whorls from the titular rainfall. In the evening, perhaps there would be enigmatic silences between gentle characters accompanied by the plinkety-plunkety-plink of wind-chimes and later a full and plangent moon.

 

Actually, no. The Raid is a skull-splinteringly violent, uncompromisingly intense and simply brilliant martial arts action movie in a nightmarish and claustrophobic setting. It has something of Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs or John Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13 and Escape from New York, along with the icy ruthlessness of Andrew Lau and Alan Mak's Infernal Affairs. There's also a reminder of the desperate fight scenes from Park Chan-wook's Oldboy. Occasionally, prior to killing or dismembering someone, a combatant will run up a wall and flip over backwards, surreally like Donald O'Connor. The leading man is Iko Uwais – who is basically the Carlos Acosta of Indonesian martial arts – and it is directed by the Welsh film-maker Gareth Huw Evans, who keeps a 10-tonne weight positioned on the accelerator.

 

It is sublimely, in fact heroically simple in its desire to deliver gasp-inducingly athletic action setpieces at all times, and the stunts and fight moves are stunning. There are times when the drum-roll of automatic fire is so deafeningly continuous it sounds like the fizz of white noise from a mistuned TV. In Enter the Dragon, Bruce Lee famously says: "We need emotional content, not anger." But frankly there seems to be an awful lot of anger here, and I can't believe that the filming ended without some pretty serious hospitalisation for everyone concerned. There really aren't many films that will have you holding clenched fists to the corners of your mouth over an hour and a half. I was forever bleating the two clipped monosyllables of shock: "Ohhhsh … " and "Ohhhhf … "

 

Uwais is Rama, a young rookie in a highly armed paramilitary special forces unit in Jakarta. On one grim day, he finds himself with his comrades in the back of an unmarked van, hurtling through the streets at dawn towards the nastiest part of town. In their black, bulletproof vests and black helmets, the team are disconcerted to be getting their briefing here, in the vehicle, rather than back at base: they are to launch a raid on a 15-storey building whose top floor is a drugs factory run by sinister crime lord Tama (Ray Sahetaphy).

 

Tama has turned the building into a virtual gated community for every serious criminal in town, and he is protected by a scary martial-arts hombre nicknamed Mad Dog (Yayan Ruhian). The briefing is secret because the raid is secret; Rama and the team discover, chillingly, they are on their own, without official backup, forced to fight their way up the building, floor by floor, corridor by corridor, against fanatical and highly armed criminals. There is just one hope: that the enemy is addicted to the thrill of unarmed combat, and will lay down their assault rifles and meet Rama with bare hands, on equal terms.

 

The building itself appears to exist in a sort of expressionist-realist universe: the exterior looks like a digital creation, and the interiors, with their endless shabby corridors, are like a bad dream. It looks like a haunted hotel in a novel by Stephen King. The cops have rifles; the bad guys have all manner of weapons, including knives and machetes – everything, it seems, short of the "little friend" of Al Pacino's Scarface.

 

The Raid does not detain the audience with expositions of character; despite the plot reversals there is no pretence at subtlety or depth, and the comparison with Tarantino does not run to tricksy flashbacks or point-of-view shifts. The action runs at hair-raising speed on one single rail from A to B. It is not for everyone and the mayhem is pretty hard to take, but the brilliance of its choreography can hardly be denied, and as film-making it's fluent and muscular and uninhibited to say the least, the element of absurdity held in deadpan check: this is a superb pulp shocker made with passion and flair.

 

The action genre has been left too long to lumbering beefcakes like Stallone and Lundgren; melding it with martial arts has given it fresh life here, and Iko Uwais is a new star. Those cinephiles who have taught themselves not to turn up their noses at westerns may wish to think on the same lines about action. The Raid is completely deranged – and completely superb.

[RobH 0]

Watched the first 30 mins of the hunger games last night. Utter poo.

[angrysteve 0]

that's a fair summing up. He's right about not believing someone didn't get hurt, I reckon the health and safety regulations in Indonesia are possibly a bit more relaxed because they properly do look like they're kicking the shit out of each other. It starts off really raw and then it becomes almost comedic in the ways they kill each other - while still being fairly realistic and brutal. Check it out if you like that sort of thing, you won't be disappointed!

[Kid Dynamite 7031]

The Raid. 90 mins of of total carnage. The story is anorexically thin and cliched and despite the fact I don't understand whatever language they were talking you could tell the acting was gash, however the action choreography is absolutely amazing and it was an extremely enjoyable film. I'd suggest if you don't like violence & bloodshed to give this one a miss...7.5/10

 

Just seen this. Pretty disappointed. Not a patch on the Tony Jaa films. Wish I'd waited for the DVD instead

[angrysteve 0]

Just seen this. Pretty disappointed. Not a patch on the Tony Jaa films. Wish I'd waited for the DVD instead

I've not seen Ong Bak - I'll check it out though, cheers!

[Christmas Tree 4725]

Deep impact 8/10

 

Went through the tissues

[ADP 0]

Hobo With A Shotgun.

 

Was shite, but in a so shite it is good way.

[Brock Manson 0]

I've not seen Ong Bak - I'll check it out though, cheers!

 

Ong Bak is absolute quality. So is Tom Yung Goong.

[Gemmill 44901]

Ong Olden Pond is better.

[Brock Manson 0]

'Ong Bak Dave' is Fish when he's been at the Stella.

[Kid Dynamite 7031]

Do you reckon he has different accents, names and personalities for himself depending on the mood he's in?

 

Bravado Dave

Angry Dave

Stand up Dave

Lady Killer Dave

[Gemmill 44901]

Sex Pest Dave.

 

He's like Worzel Gummidge with his different heads.

[Kid Dynamite 7031]

Drive

 

On US Netflix already

[SCOREBOARD1 0]

Transformers: Dark side of the moon. Was canny. 7/10 On a side note I went to go see 'Iron Sky' at the Tyneside Cinema last n it was bastard sold out. Was only showing the one night.

Edited May 24, 2012 by SCOREBOARD1

[luckyluke 2]

Deep impact 8/10

 

Went through the tissues

 

Shits all over Armegeddon (released approximately the same time iirc)

[Andrew 4770]

Transformers: Dark side of the moon. Was canny. 7/10 On a side note I went to go see 'Iron Sky' at the Tyneside Cinema last n it was bastard sold out. Was only showing the one night.

 

no! NO!

[ADP 0]

anyone seen KIDS? http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113540/

 

rewatched it this morning... what a fucking movie. 9/10

 

If you haven't seen this, WATCH IT ASAP.

 

nb: not for the faint of heart

[ADP 0]

also has the best soundtrack to a film ever IMHO.

[ADP 0]

Also, Apocalypse Now. Pretty much flawless 9.5/10

[LoveTheBobby 1]

^ Got the directors cut to watch but it's about 2 days long so waiting for the right mood/bout of flu .

If anyone's seen the fuller version would you say it brings much more to the party than the original ?

[ADP 0]

yeah ive got the redux, that's what I re-watched last night. It's a tough call, on the one hand, the theatrical cut is probably a tighter 'film'. But IMHO, the redux is better in terms of having a consistent atmosphere. One of the many problems of the film's production was that Copolla didnt know what he wanted to do with it, I think the redux shows how much of mind fuck the content and the production of the film actually was - this is the consistent tone of the redux: a complete mess, beautifully captured in amazing camera shots that comes together like a montage of controlled anarchy. It's like, every 4 minutes or so at the start, there would be a line in sheen's monologue, or by a character that really smacks you in the face... by the end, every 4 mins there will be a shot which just sums up a motif of the entire movie. As if what the film has dissolved into cannot be captured in dialogue or words as it is so far beyond comprehension. Then the culmination is Sheen taking Lance by the hand and walking off in complete silence out of camp Kurtz... fuck i love that film!