Films! good, bad, recomendations, and general film talk

[Plexi Ken]

The Last Station: Good film with excellent performances. If you like costume drama, you'll like this.

Die Welle (The Wave): Watched on iPlayer and though it was great, not without flaws but better than I though it would be having read the synopsis. The characters are a bit too stereotypical but the film keeps moving at a good pace. The end was a bit predicable and IMO a little lazy.

On the TV front, just finished Breaking Bad - Season 2 which was just brilliant, anyone who hasn't seen the series should check it out. I also thought Sherlock was OK, I don't like the text overlays and it's a bit to family friendly (typical BBC,  HBO would have made something much more interesting) but the acting from Cumberbatch and Freeman was good.

[_tom_]

I watched it again last week.  Now have you seen Kung Fu Hustle?  :D

Nope - is it similar?

[Philly Q]

I watched it again last week.  Now have you seen Kung Fu Hustle?  :D

Nope - is it similar?

Yes, same sort of thing, lots of crazy cartoonish martial arts action with Stephen Chow (and you'll spot a few other cast members from Shaolin Soccer).  Kung Fu Hustle had a bigger budget so the FX are better and there are more big "production numbers".  I think it was quite successful internationally too.  

I don't think it's quite as funny or entertaining as Shaolin Soccer, but it' still very, very good.

[_tom_]

Might have to give it a go then! The bad FX are what makes Shaolin Soccer so funny though, I think.

Just watched Memento and I'm thoroughly confused.

[WezV]

on the special edition DVD i think they have the option of playing the scenes in chronological order - never done it though, i am worried it will just be an average film with the scenes being in the right order

great film as it is though

[Philly Q]

on the special edition DVD i think they have the option of playing the scenes in chronological order - never done it though, i am worried it will just be an average film with the scenes being in the right order

Yeah, the UK 3-disc edition and US 2-disc edition have that option.  I think life's too short for me to ever get round to watching it though.  Maybe when it comes out on Blu-ray.  :lol:

[_tom_]

Yeah I think it might be a bit cr@p if it's told "normally".

[Ian Price]

Watched Bruno last night. It was much cruder than I thought it would be (and I expect something very crude). Some genuinely laugh out loud funny moments but also tohers that I thought were going a bit too far.

Might watch it again so that I don't get the initial shock factor.

[_tom_]

Shutter Island - preferred the book but still a good film that makes you think. Not sure which of the two stories I believed. Anyone else notice a fair few blatant green-screened shots that weren't very well put together?

[Philly Q]

Just watched The Shinjuku Incident.  A very different type of Jackie Chan film - no comedy, very few stunts, lots of action but no martial arts as such.  Interesting, but not particularly good.

[Philly Q]

I know you boys are mostly into American TV series, but did anyone whatch The Deep on BBC1 last night? 

What a big steaming pile of shite.

[Ian Price]

I almost watched it but decided to go for The Boat That Rocked instead. Sounds like it was a sensible choice! Not a bad film - good soundtrack.

[dave_mc]

i watched (against my better judgement) totally awesome last night on rte. Can i bring a case to trading standards?

[_tom_]

I'm so, so late with this, but I watched 2001: A Space Odyssey last night. Really enjoyed it even though I wasn't originally in the mood for a slow/weird film! The effects and camera work are really good, can't figure out how some of it was done still so I'm gonna have to have a rewatch some time. I have no idea what it was really about though.

[MDV]

I'm so, so late with this, but I watched 2001: A Space Odyssey last night. Really enjoyed it even though I wasn't originally in the mood for a slow/weird film! The effects and camera work are really good, can't figure out how some of it was done still so I'm gonna have to have a rewatch some time. I have no idea what it was really about though.

Alien super-power seeds the universe with Monoliths which identify biological traits that can lead to intelligence and enhance them, guiding animal life toward spacefaring civilisation.

The ones the apes at the start discovered prompted their advancement into humans, the one on the moon was a development marker that showed a species had developed spaceflight and the ability to find it when buried and the one near saturn/jupiter (depending whether its the book or film) was to accelerate humans to some next step in assisted evolution.

HAL went nuts because of some cliched 'does not compute' contradiction between being programmed to be honest, but follow instructions, but then being ordered to withold all the information behind the Discovery mission from the crew ('he' was the only 'crew member' that knew everything about it with the discovery on the moon and the signal (noise the monolith made) to saturn/jupiter). The only way out that was allowed to him with all that was to kill the crew, apparently.

Needless to say, the book/s are better, despite the film being as good as it is. If you know whats going on its all there to figure out, but theres more depth and discussion in the books.