What DVD have you just watched?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItfesHOjpwE

Today I watched this - the Ron Howard film:

Tomorrow I will see what the extra material holds - if you like the Fabs, you need to have this.

Sing Street

What a breath of fresh air, especially after the over inflated hyping of La La Land. I love the music in this film which successfully homages the eighties scene, with lyrics that flow directly from the drama which surrounds them.

This film is built on a foundation of serious issues within the lives of the actors: A divorce; School bullying; Girls preyed on by older men. However, rather than diving in a pool of despond and self flagellating introspection this movie uses these scenarios as a springboard. 

Everyone should have a sibling like the main protagonists elder brother.

Highly recommended.

M

Whiplash. Written & directed by Damien Chazelle.

Mesmerising - as simple as that. The music is just superb and the battle of wits between the tutor (JK Simmons) and student (Miles Teller) deeply affecting. I missed this at the cinema (due to the imminent arrival of child no 3!) and now wish I’d seen it on the big screen.

I remember encountering a college tutor not too dissimilar to the Terence Fletcher character - I learnt more from this one chap than anyone else.

Superb film.

I loved Whiplash too - for the same reasons you mention,

Set in 1961, the film follows one week in the life of Llewyn Davis, played by Oscar Isaac, a folk singer struggling to achieve musical success while keeping his life in order. Very well made.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzc5shjTGkc

Not much characterisation and dialogue hard to follow but the action sequences were superb.

Noble:

I can thank my girlfriend for this one.  She had met Christine Noble on a trip to Vietnam and helped out organising paint for her Children's shelter.  The film charts her early formative years in Ireland and her dream of Vietnam which led her to travel to Hi Chi Minh City many years later.  An excellent uplifting film - highly recommended. 

JamieWednesday posted:

Absolutely glorious.

I've a feeling this one will appeal to most on the forum...

Thanks for the heads up on this , I watched it on Netflix last night and loved it !

Louder Than Bombs explores the death of a famous photographer (Isabelle Huppert), and how her husband (Gabriel Byrne) and sons, (Jesse Eisenberg and Devin Druid) cope while unraveling the truth behind the mysterious accident that claimed her life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4I1l_J9QuVk

Hell or High Water.

I really enjoyed this excellent film.  It's hard to tell the plot without spoiling the film, but I will say that the backdrop is the America we rarely get to see - small rural towns in their death throes, rampant debt foreclosures wherever you care to look, and an air of disillusionment all around, like it's end of the great American dream. After watching this, you begin to get an inkling of understanding as to what happened in the last US election.

Richard - you are so right and in my experience the US has been like that for decades - I remember as an 18 year old visiting the US and was shocked/suprised at the relative poverty in many of the backwaters  - the stuff you just don't see on the movies (normally) or TV in Europe outside the 'standard' US inner city poverty  - and more recently quite surprised and perhaps a little depressed at what I see in states like in North Carolina.... but again that digs deep into the US culture whether we feel its right or wrong - its perhaps all too easy for us to inappropraitely judge on this side of the Atlantic

Simon, certainly decay and decline of areas of the US are not a new phenomenon, it's just there was always the hope and the dream that balanced things out somewhat.  When I lived in NYC back in the '90s I remember taking some friends who had come over from the UK on a road trip down the East coast.  It was as much for my benefit as I wanted to revisit old haunts from when I used to go and stay with my father in Virginia during school holidays.  I had happy memories of fishing out in Chesapeake Bay, but realised I'd never before driven down the coast, so that's what we set out to do.  What we found was eerie.  One ghost town after another. My friends were quite shocked and it really opened their eyes to a different side of the US that is easily forgotten.

Richard on a similar theme. I just watched 'Crash'.  A very provoking film and good casting, but the challenges are far from resolved... 

Guy007 posted:

Richard on a similar theme. I just watched 'Crash'.  A very provoking film and good casting, but the challenges are far from resolved... 

That's a great film. The crash scene and fire is just so well done (and sold me my n-Vi when the dealer used it in a demo). Great soundtrack too. 

It Follows. 

Another movie I wish I’d seen at the cinema. I remember this film received high praise upon release, with Rotten Tomatoes giving it a healthy aggregated score of 97%. A rather interesting movie but not quite as ‘terrifying’ as the media hype claimed, although it did successfully generate a sense of unease and foreboding that was quite haunting. This atmosphere exaggerated by being filmed on location in suburban Detroit, where the tragic urban decay reinforced the concept of a relentless malevolent force.

So for once, not an obvious and predictable horror (call it what you will) movie, and certainly more inventive than the recent wave of jump scare popcorn horror flicks.

Well worth watching if your are a genre fan but don’t expect a terror fest.

The Witch.

Continuing with a supernatural theme this weekend, I thought I’d follow (groan) It Follows with this movie. It may divide opinion, but I thought it was very interesting and utterly compelling as you never know where this story is heading - reminiscent in some ways of the best 1970’s horror films. Genuinely unsettling and thought provoking in terms of the power and importance of religion during this historical period. The cast throughout are just superb too. Hard going in some ways if you are a parent though.

Trolls for more times than I can count.

Never underestimate the ability of a 3 year old to watch the same film again and again and again...

steve 

Courtesy of Lovefilm on DVD; Captain Fantastic.

Indeed, it is quite fantastic.  Loved it.

Hunt For the Wilderpeople: Written & directed by Taika Waititi.

Rotten Tomatoes - Critics Consensus: "The charmingly offbeat Hunt for the Wilderpeople unites a solid cast, a talented filmmaker, and a poignant, funny, deeply affecting message."

Another movie I wish I’d seen at the cinema. Thoroughly enjoyable. The narrative unfolds with wit and humour - cloying sentimentality refreshingly absent. plus, so many quotable lines! Excellent performances from Sam Neill & Julian Dennison and supporting cast too. Filmed in New Zealand so worth watching just for the landscape shots alone. Also, lovely use of Leonard Cohen’s The Partisan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5SOdK-9f_A

With my amps and Hi-Cap being serviced at Naim HQ, I've got the chance to catch up on some movies.

This modest Francophone movie about a woman in a small Belgian city trying to keep her job by persuading her colleagues to forgo their bonuses is utterly compelling thanks to a magnificent performance by Marion Cotillard. As the dowdy, put-upon, exhausted and mentally fragile Sandra, she is both convincing and magnetic.

If you think the film sounds a bit unpromising, give it a go - it works as both a modern day morality tale/critique of contemporary work culture and as a very human drama. Highly recommended.

This was jolly good fun. Complete nonsense of course, but only in a "Tortured soul goes to Tibet & acquires superpowers from monks" kind of way. Benedict does his thing, and some mind and building-bending special effects of the kind seen in Inception but more so are there in abundance, and rather reminiscent of David Bowman's trip through the time tunnel in 2001: A Space Odyssey. It moves along at a cracking pace, not to be watched if you're tipsy or stoned.

At three hours this Oscar-winning picture (for once, the Academy got it spot on) from 1946 is rather long, but barely a minute is wasted. A touching and beautifully-acted tale of three US ex-servicemen trying to adapt to life after the end of the war in a small American city, it is one of the best Hollywod movies of its era. The script by Robert Sherwood is superb, and the direction by William Wyler both deft and sensitive.

And the cast - Dana Andrews, Harold Russell, Hoagy Carmichael, Theresa Wright, Virginia Mayo, even Gene Krupa as a nightclub drummer - is a wonder to behold. Best of all are  Myrna Loy and Frederic March, two of the true Tinseltown greats. They don't make stars (or movies) like that any more. More's the pity.

Kevin-W posted:

At three hours this Oscar-winning picture (for once, the Academy got it spot on) from 1946 is rather long, but barely a minute is wasted. A touching and beautifully-acted tale of three US ex-servicemen trying to adapt to life after the end of the war in a small American city, it is one of the best Hollywod movies of its era. The script by Robert Sherwood is superb, and the direction by William Wyler both deft and sensitive.

And the cast - Dana Andrews, Harold Russell, Hoagy Carmichael, Theresa Wright, Virginia Mayo, even Gene Krupa as a nightclub drummer - is a wonder to behold. Best of all are  Myrna Loy and Frederic March, two of the true Tinseltown greats. They don't make stars (or movies) like that any more. More's the pity.

 

 

Wonderful movie. Also great Cinematography by Gregg Toland of Citizen Kane, Kev.