What I've Been Watching: The Catch-All Film Thread

The Lynch one reflected his origins and we found it was much better on a small screen (TV) rather than a movie screen.

Relic (2020)

An interesting horror title that does not focus on jumpscares. It also leaves a lot to interpretation, but was quite unnerving overall. I quite liked it. But the end was a bit wtf. As I said, not very clear and leaves a lot to the imagination. But I liked it. A lot than more generic horror titles.

I rewatched the King's Speech last night, and found it just enjoyable as the first time I viewed it, which was several years ago. The story is well known, certainly nothing really new there, and yet the acting as well as setting/costumes really make it even so much more.

Me and wife just watched Netflix's The Devil All the Time. Great cast (if a bit underused) and a pretty good story, IMHO. I'd rate it 8/10.

I can never use numerics for movies so sorry but I'm not sure what 8/10 means here. Almost the best scifi maybe?

The Devil All the Time is a story of adapting to highly civilized USA (haha). It's very different from mainstream, you won't see any forced political correctness. Had to check twice if Coen brothers made it, feels like one of their gems, but no, they didn't.

Characters (and actors) are all fantastic. For sure Holland in the lead will be everyone's choice of job well done, but I adored others too, for example Pattinson's depiction of a sleazy pedophile abusing naivity and ignorance is top notch. It won't surprise me if some of cast get oscar nominations.

The movie has only one serious issue, and that's it's tempo. All the time it walks on the edge of bearability, everything is just very slow for no reason.

This movie is IMO a mustwatch. Make sure you get some sleep before tuning in though.

I’m thinking of ending things. Pretty cool. Not sure I understood it all, but I have my theories as what it was trying to saying. But I quite liked it. And found some similarities with Synecdoche New York, especially the atemporal elements. Recommended. Especially if you like Charlie Kaufman’s work.

I've deliberately stayed away from that one.
Based on imdb users it seems to be trolling the audience entry. Like Primer.

joxer said:

I've deliberately stayed away from that one.
Based on imdb users it seems to be trolling the audience entry. Like Primer.

Click to expand...

No idea what trolling you're referring to. I loved it.

I just watched "Professor Marston and the Wonder Women" and that was a crowd-pleaser. Everyone in the family enjoyed it. It's not really for children at all but I think most 18+ audiences would appreciate it.

As for new on Netflix, I think the last movie we watched was "The Octopus Teacher" which was pretty darn cool. It was a documentary about a man who kinda befriends an octopus. No other way to describe it.

(And thank you all for the recommendation of the Devil All the Time - that one's on my list to watch too.)

Well... Many of those words of yours... Crowdpleaser, enjoyed, not for childre, 18+, octopus, teacher, cool...
Associate me on The Handmaiden.
Not gonna spoil any of it, do watch please.

On the other hand, there is some upcoming octopus movie where the trailer is so bad it's hilarious. This one:

I'm not gonna watch it, cmon.

YouTube at the moment.

Lol. I believe that's actually an art piece named, "The Mexican Border".

joxer said:

Well… Many of those words of yours… Crowdpleaser, enjoyed, not for childre, 18+, octopus, teacher, cool…
Associate me on The Handmaiden.
Not gonna spoil any of it, do watch please.

On the other hand, there is some upcoming octopus movie where the trailer is so bad it's hilarious. This one:

I'm not gonna watch it, cmon.

Click to expand...

Yes, but is the upcoming movie a crowdpleaser to be enjoyed by adults 18+?



As for that two hour long South Korean movie called "The Handmaiden" I'll save myself from watching it and just give you the imdb info:

"A woman is hired as a handmaiden to a Japanese heiress, but secretly she is involved in a plot to defraud her."

And I'll reword that to:

"A lady is assigned as a maid to a rich Japanese snob, but secretly she's out to ruin the rich snob's life. Hilarity ensues! Total crowdpleaser, 18+."

That work?

If the octopus in that movie you find hilarious then it works.

Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii (for about the 50thtime)

Hey there Harry Potter fans!

Wanna see some more HP stuff?

Maggie Smith, dressed in black, arrives at the arrival of a new born baby. The baby, who's father has recently died, quickly becomes Daniel Radcliffe. He then suffers cruel and unusual treatment from is step-dad before being sent to a weird and archaic school somewhere far from home where he is singled out as a special student.



Along the way he meets all kinds of strange and unique characters played by such people as Imelda Staunton, Dawn French and Zoe Wanamaker. Ian McKellen plays the anti-Dumbledore.



While this is technically a TV show, this first episode/part of 1999's David Copperfield produced by the BBC and WGBH, is exactly 90 minutes long and could quite sensibly be viewed as a complete movie by itself, as it ends at the exact moment when Radcliffe/Copperfield is replaced by an older actor for the next stage in the fictional biography.



Since this came out 2 years before the first HP film, its an interesting piece to see Radcliffe get into training for HP in the starring role at just 9 or 10 years old. I suspect this was the primary CV contribution to him getting the part amongst all the other HP lookalike hopefuls.



Uniquely Interesting/10

Finished watching Part 2 to complete the David Copperfield mini-series/double film set. Part 2 was again 90 minutes long.

I don't know if it was part of the original text or whether its a result of making it into two films to be aired at different times, but they really are two completely different films, both not really needing the other much at all bar from some recurring characters and some light character arcing.

After watching part 1 I looked up user reviews on IMDB and a relatively common issue people had was that they felt the second part wasn't as strong as the first part. However, I'd have said the opposite and I found the second part to be slightly better than the first, though why that is I couldn't really say. Not briefly anyway.

Overall, I can see why this one isn't as famous as some of Dicken's other works, as it does lack a central story and is very much a road movie-come-fictional autobiography that's more like a sketch show than a singular narrative. Still, its more famous than The Old Curiosity Shop, one that even I haven't seen in any form ever yet, though I know there's some out there.

Next up, A Tale of Two Cities, a much more famous one, but another I've weirdly never seen yet.

I watched a movie last night that I think I've never seen before, Bogurt's "The Caine Mutiny." I liked it, good solid acting by some people that stayed in the business and became much bigger stars, Looked like they actually used some WW II film footage rather than doing their own effects in a few scenes, but I'm ok with that.

Another Dickens 3 hour'er, from the same year as the one above that could be viewed as a movie or as a two part TV series, that I saw this weekend was Great Expectations. And the surprising star of this one?

Hey there Palpatine fans!

Yup, ol' palpy plays the Dickensian version of Saul from Breaking Bad, or, indeed, Better Call Saul, a very popular and super-creative lawyer who's powers are beyond the ken of most mortal men.



And now combine that with the creepy aura of Palpatine as he has a cabal of servants who all do his bidding without question and a string of henchman of the more unpleasant kind and you have a very accurate depiction of what if Palpatine existed in Dickensian London.

The only other actor I particularly recognised was Charlotte Rampling as Miss Haversham, and she was superb. She would have made a perfect Galadriel for Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy:



But generally it was to the show's benefit that I didn't recognise most of the main stars as it allowed me to wallow in the story more without being distracted by such comparisons.

It's a really creepy tale, verging on the horror in places and I was surprised at how much I found myself invested and rarely found myself looking at the clock.



I don't know how well it compares to other versions, but it certainly motivated me to watch some other versions at some point, unlike Copperfield, even though the basic plot outlines are very similar, what with them both being sort-of biographies that spend the first part mostly in childhood and the second in young adulthood, but, wow, are they so completely different! This one felt more like a cross between Sherlock Holmes and Edgar Allen Poe than a generic Victorian sadness simulator.

8/10

I did also see A Tale of Two Cities, but that one definitely was a TV series, having 8 x 24 minute episodes, and it was from a different era, made in 1980, so I'll write about that in the TV series thread at a later time.