Moot_Geeza wrote:

Paul the sparky wrote:

I didn't even know you were a teacher

Tee-hee'd at this.

Quietly savage.

Is that like detention?

Remember he's old school it's the belt.

regmcfly wrote:

Remember he's old school it's the belt.

Sounds Unlikely.

The Killer

Hmmm. I normally quite like Fincher, and thought his previous, Mank, was excellent. But this just felt a bit empty - acting was kinda fine, as was editing/directing, but while I get the plot was kinda meant to go nowhere, it literally just went nowhere. So, meh.

You should treat yourself to a rewatch of Watership Down.

Seeing as Challengers is described as a romantic sports film, I think I'd have to go with City of God. Of course, City of God is a fantastic film anyway so....

Moot_Geeza wrote:

You should treat yourself to a rewatch of Watership Down.

no thanks i like sleeping

it's not on any of the streamers anyway it seems

I thought this was an interesting discussion of why Wish looks a bit weird:



Tl;drw: Wish invites the audience to think back on previous animations they’ve watched but the art style, which doesn’t include motion blur and has a deliberately flat look to harken back to 2D animation, inadvertently reminds the audience of cheap TV 3D animation, which also has these attributes due to budget limitations.

g.man wrote:

regmcfly wrote:

Remember he's old school it's the belt.

Sounds Unlikely.

This is a reference from so long ago it got no love.

Like a single leaf of basil floating in the wind..

It’s back at the cinema??

Edit - I should have looked up.

Edit edit - it’s at the Light Monday night. Think that’s a visit.

Intolerance (1916) - I was looking at a Reddit thread of ambitious films for the Sunday Roast thread and this one kept coming up - I’ve had the Blu-ray for years but despite a couple of abortive attempts haven’t actually properly sat down and watched it. So I finally watched all nearly-three-hours of it.

I really didn’t like Birth of a Nation, the director’s previous film. Whatever its contemporary merits, in the modern day I found it incredibly boring and obviously extraordinarily racist. This film is significantly better on both fronts.

The film is a sort of weird riposte to the accusations of racism that followed DW Griffith after he made a massively racist film because he was a racist. The film is meant to be about intolerance through the ages. It follows four separate intercut stories - the fall of Babylon, the crucifixion of Jesus, the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in France and a ‘modern’ day story about a poor couple whose lives are blighted by the actions of a puritanical ‘uplift society’. The film primarily focuses on the Babylon and modern stories and both of these were later expanded and spun off into separate films.

In terms of positives, it’s not massively racist! Hoorah! The Babylon story has hugely ambitious visuals - massive sets, hundreds of extras, plenty of action… meanwhile, the modern story has the most emotionally engaging storyline of the four and climaxes with a dramatic conclusion.

The bad is that while it’s less boring than Birth of a Nation, it is still quite boring. I found the first third of the film pretty hard going as it takes a while for each of the four stories to be introduced and get going. Four independent narratives would be quite a lot in the modern age - without dialogue and only a smattering of inter-title cards to introduce the large casts in each segment, it is perhaps a bit too much and the film can be hard to follow. The film is also less than the sum of its parts - the theme of intolerance is quite vague (frankly a huge portion of how the theme is expressed during the film is the inter-title cards explicitly name dropping it over and over in a very on-the-nose style) and the four stories don’t feel like they have much in common other than interpersonal conflict, which is a relatively ubiquitous component of stories generally. The stories don’t cohere or come together in any kind of satisfactory way at the end and I think I’d probably prefer to just watch the separate films of the two main stories.

This is still well thought of and there’s still aesthetic value to be gained from it in 2024 - but there are many silent films that are still brilliant experiences today so it doesn’t get a free pass for being dated and a bit dull for the modern viewer. ★★☆☆☆

For Failed-alliteration Horror Friday (this one is neither folk nor 4K), I watched:

The Beast in the Cellar (1970) - This is a thematically interesting low-key horror film from the production company behind Witchfinder General and The Blood on Satan’s Claw.

Two quarrelsome sisters who live near a rural army base are alarmed when soldiers begin to be murdered by what seems to be a mysterious beast. But there is more to the situation than first appears…

I quite liked this. It has similar issues with not having a clear protagonist that other Tigon productions have and is a bit too wonky for its own good (plus lead actress Beryl Reid is actually quite irritating) but I thought it was well worth watching - it’s just too wonky to be considered conventionally good. Unconventionally good then. ★★★☆☆

I always figured that maybe it was going to be a decent indie film and then Jack Nicholson got attached to it and budgets and expectations spiralled.

I was about 6 when ET came out. Didn't see it at the cinema, and by the time I watched it on TV about 5 years later, I didn't get what the fuss was about. It's alright, I suppose.

Went to see Civil War yesterday, and it's a bit of an odd one. As a drama about journalists in a war zone it's very good - interesting characters, plenty of tension. As a story about a civil war in modern day US, it's a bit inconsequential. Rather than using the characters as a vehicle to explore the subject and how this could happen, it's mainly just a backdrop for the personal stories.

regmcfly wrote:

g.man wrote:

regmcfly wrote:

Remember he's old school it's the belt.

Sounds Unlikely.

This is a reference from so long ago it got no love. Like a single leaf of basil floating in the wind..

I see you both.