list/discuss/rate - your recently watched movies

Invisible Agent

Nice mix of wartime espionage and sci-fi from 1942 with Peter Lorre and Cedric Hardwick tracking the Nazi's pursuit of a mysterious disappearing spy.   Penned by WW II refugee Curt Siodmak, Invisible Agent is a shameless and fun anti-German propaganda 'morale-booster'.

Starry Eyes (2014) Written and Directed by Kevin Kolsch and Dennis Widmyer

Satan's Casting Couch Potatoes

If Goethe had set his Faust story in the USA but with a 'Hooters' waitress as the protagonist dreaming of that one audition where the big time beckons, you have the first 30 minutes or so of Starry Eyes. I'd hesitate to call this 'horror' as it's a decent psychological/occult thriller up to this point but things take some very unnerving twists long before the end. It maybe straddles too many genres to really work as a unified whole despite it moving up very smoothly through the gears to encompass possession flick/body horror, home invasion slasher and splatter gore fest in equal measures. The ending is as gory and plain vanilla nasty as it is unexpected but on the downside?, the film industry as Satanic Luvvies Sanctum was very old and very tired a long time ago. Worth seeing but don't expect too much innovation or originality. Gene Simmons' son Nick has a small cameo role in this. Hint: look for the talentless musician who says very little but still irritates hugely.




Edited by ExittheLemming - March 15 2015 at 06:46

Atavachron wrote: Invisible Agent Nice mix of wartime espionage and sci-fi from 1942 with Peter Lorre and Cedric Hardwick tracking the Nazi's pursuit of a mysterious disappearing spy.   Penned by WW II refugee Curt Siodmak, Invisible Agent is a shameless and fun anti-German propaganda 'morale-booster'.

Berberian Sound Studio

Superb surrealist psychological thriller.

The Bedford Incident

Decades before Crimson Tide explored similar themes, this 1965 naval thriller has Richard Widmark as a zealous captain hunting a Russian sub against orders, while photojournalist Sidney Poitier observes the growing tension on-board ship.   First-rate Cold War drama and a great cast addresses issues that were exploding in real life such as war, race, and freedom of the press, and filmed in that shimmering, grainy black & white that one only gets in films of the early '60s.



   


Edited by Atavachron - March 19 2015 at 04:08

Face (1997) Directed by Antonia Bird

One of the common barbs hurled in the direction of this movie is that it cribs from a very successful British gangster movie that only appeared 12 months later (Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels from 1998)
Notwithstanding this crass dissimilitude, how many female directors has there been on a gangster movie?
Judged on that basis, Face would fail any serious test of its credentials but it's NOT really a gangster movie i.e. this is, I suspect at heart a rather botched attempt at a social critique of the UK circa the 80's. It purports to equate Thatcher's 'greed for all' manifesto as interpreted by a poorly educated working class demographic who supplant 'entrepreneurial zeal' with 'stealing other's ill gotten gains'. The fact that the vast majority of this social strata chose to NOT steal, NOT intimidate and NOT defraud is clearly lost on the director. The script often betrays Bird's misguided idealism as being more than a tad wet behind the ears e.g. young and beautiful left wing activist (Lena Headey) knowingly dates an ex Communist now armed robber (Robert Carlyle) in the risibly gauche belief that he is 'better than his accomplices' and will leave them behind for a morally upright future. The humour is uniformly lame and merely renders the violence as inconsequential (the unwitting coup de grace for any moralistic agenda) Ray Winstone and Robert Carlyle are worth anyone's time even on inferior material such as this but the political and the personal just get hopelessly muddled here. Damon Albarn appears as the young hoodlum Jason. He sucks hugely and get's shot in the head early on. Even his portrayal of a blood splattered cadaver is unconvincing.

^ possibly. What perhaps rubbed my fur up the wrong way was the implication (or maybe my inference) that resourceful individuals from poor working class origins in Thatcher's Britain when faced with hardship could be forgiven for choosing a life of crime. Even the left wing protestors and activists portrayed in the movie are clearly middle class liberals appalled/fearful of the consequences of a widening chasm between the haves and the have nots. The vast majority do NOT resort to lawlessness and neither docile conditioning or defeatist apathy is the source of this resistance. Face is a decent gangster movie but a rather timid revisionist take on 1980's UK

^ that's the deal breaker all said and done. Anyways, Ray Winstone is starting to resemble a pearly king 'arry Worth innit?

A Person wrote: mithrandir wrote: Blue Ruin - 7/10 continuing my search for modern day cut-throat thrillers/suspense/revenge flicks that get straight to the point while drawing from the past (80s) Blue Ruin was a lot of fun, it has some genuinely tense moments.

what really made that movie was the lead (Dwight's) indecisiveness and fumbling around, that guy was nerve wracking! 

Gross Pointe Blank.......nice little 'black comedy' with John Cusack and Minnie Driver.Professional killer returns to his high school reunion 10 years later and reunite with his old girlfriend.....laughs ensue with Dan Ackroyd as a rival killer.