list/discuss/rate - your recently watched movies

Hercules

In our second Hercules flick of the year, Dwayne Johnson (aka 'The Rock') fakes his way through this cheesy Saturday matinée-style adventure that has more in common with Pirates of the Caribbean than Greek mythology.   Embarrassing if not for the tongue-in-cheek attitude, and well worth missing.

A Walk with the Tombstones with Liam Neeson.

A superior dark thriller about a retired cop tracking down a bunch of sadistic kidnappers. Very stylish, shot in suitably drab colours, terrific performances and gutsy hard-hitting action in a few spots, it's often along the lines of Nic Cage's great `8MM' from so many years ago, as well as a touch of vigilante flicks like last years `Prisoners' and things like `The Punisher' etc (although it's not an action film as such).

The Wolf Of Wall Street

Imagine 'Goodfellas' set in the world of stock brokering rather than the mafia & you'd be pretty close to what this film offers (even down to the fact of being based on truth).

Hardly Scorcese's most imaginative film, but that said, it is an excellent film, due in no small part to Leonardo DiCaprio, who's performance is stunning - he's in virtually every scene but never overshadows the supporting cast, none of whom let the standard down.

Sometimes funny, sometimes difficult to watch, way too many standout scenes to pinpoint a highlight & always compelling - this is genuinely one of the best films I've seen in a long time.

Solid 5 stars.

Edited by Jim Garten - November 11 2014 at 11:25

Jim Garten wrote: The Wolf Of Wall Street Imagine 'Goodfellas' set in the world of stock brokering rather than the mafia & you'd be pretty close to what this film offers (even down to the fact of being based on truth). Hardly Scorcese's most imaginative film, but that said, it is an excellent film, due in no small part to Leonardo DiCaprio, who's performance is stunning - he's in virtually every scene but never overshadows the supporting cast, none of whom let the standard down.

Yeah, I've noticed that a major theme in Scorcese's films starting with Mean Streets is how he depicts organized crime as more like a business world that happens to exist outside the law - an approach I much prefer to the overtly romanticized view F. F. Coppola presented in The Godfather. It'd make sense for Scorcese to occasionally flip the script.

The term "artsploitation" comes to mind. I originally coined that word to describe David Cronenberg, I think, but Von Trier's probably an even better example. As might some of Kim Ki-duk's earlier films.

Yeah, it's funny how at times the "avant-garde" becomes a sort of cliché. I've actually become more and more 'classicist', for lack of a better word, with film and literature too over the last year or two.

The entire "documentary TV crew sent back in time" gimmick is pretty damn goofy, but I like it for showing more prehistoric marine life of the monstrous variety than the usual suspects like plesiosaurs and megalodons. Some of those prehistoric giant squid, armoured predatory fish and toothed whales are some scary critters. Why don't the dunkleosteus or basilosaurus have its own horror movie yet?


For a film made in 1933 and probably one of the very first "talkies", it's surprisingly modern. Not just does the creative camerawork with a lot of movement feel as much like something from the 1950s as the 1930s, but the way the plot focuses on both the police investigation of the story's central crimes and the various layers of the organized crime hierarchy is really ahead of its time to reminding me of many modern crime TV series. Then there's the bizarre expressionistic dream scenes and borderline supernatural plot twists later on, adding an absurdist feel to things that still marks this film as a product of interbellum Germany.

Any Peter Greenaway fans here....?

A Most Wanted Man

Low-key spy thriller with Philip Seymour Hoffman in one of his last roles as a German intelligence officer running surveillance on Hamburg's Islamic community.   Tense and dreary, not a bad little espionage flick.

- Sin City: A Dame to Kill For

Edited by Walton Street - November 26 2014 at 06:44