Film Club
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Gladiator [RSC Film Club 11]
by LimeGreenLegend- 1 follower
- 8 replies
- 2.2k views
This month we are celebrating the work of Sir Ridley Scott, as suggested by @djw180 and @Spinnaker1981, with the winning film being another DJ nomination, Gladiator. Released in the year 2000 it stars Russel Crowe in an Oscar winning performance, with support from Joaquin Phoenix, Derek Jacobi, Richard Harris and the legendary Oliver Reed in his final role. Gladiator was a huge success on release, winning the Oscar for best picture, and a nomination for best director for Ridley Scott, one of three in his career (Thelma and Louise and Black Hawk Down being the other two). It is the last great Hollywood swords and sandals epic, telling a classic tale of betray…
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The Duellists [Film Club Extra 04]
by LimeGreenLegend- 1 follower
- 3 replies
- 2.1k views
We're getting a double dose of Ridley Scott action this month as, well, we've all seen Gladiator and there was a cry for a second, lesser known, slice of his filmography. That comes in the form of his debut feature film, 1977's The Duellists, nominated by myself, and seconded by @Sinister. Set in Napoleonic France, this film is based on a Joseph Conrad story, who is the author of Heart of Darkness, the inspiration for Apocalypse Now, among many other amazing books. It is the tale of two men obsessively fighting over their honour over the course of decades. It is an absolutely gorgeous looking film, with Scott taking inspiration from Stanley Kubrick's Barry …
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The Killing of a Sacred Deer [Film Club Extra 03] 1 2
by LimeGreenLegend- 1 follower
- 37 replies
- 6.1k views
I'm gonna be selfish here, and throw this film in as an extra for Halloween simply because I can't stop thinking about it since I saw it a few weeks ago and would really like to hear your guys' opinion on it. The Killing of a Sacred Deer is a psychological horror/thriller from Yorgos Lanthimos (The Lobster, The Favourite), a Greek filmmaker who has fast become one of my favourites. The film stars Colin Farrell and Nicole Kidman as Steven and Anna Murphy, a seemingly perfect couple. They are both medical professionals, they have two bright young children, and live in a luxurious home with all the trappings that entails. But Steven has a strange relationship wi…
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Dune [RSC Film Club 08]
by LimeGreenLegend- 2 followers
- 18 replies
- 2.2k views
This month's Film Club genre is sci-fi war films, nominated by @Squirrel, and that comes in the form of warring families of nobles battling for control of a desolate desert planet, and its valuable resources, in David Lynch's Dune, picked by @djw180. A critical and commercial failure on release, with Roger Ebert naming it the worst film of 1984, Dune has gone on to garner a cult following since then, with more recent reviews being generally more positive. Featuring an ensemble cast, including Sting, Patrick Stewart and Max von Sydow, and directed by master of the surreal, David Lynch (Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, Mullholland Drive) you know that the film will …
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Mad Max: Fury Road [RSC Film Club 05]
by LimeGreenLegend- 8 replies
- 2.6k views
This month the film club is hitting the road, with the theme being road movies. The winner, nominated by @Squirrel, is Mad Max: Fury Road. This is a sequel/reboot of the legendary Australian film series, the fourth entry, and the first in thirty years. It was written and directed by the creator of the original films, George Miller (Happy Feet, Happy Feet 2, Babe: Pig in the City) and stars Tom Hardy (Bronson, The Dark Knight Rises) as Max, replacing Mel Gibson in the role, and Charlize Theron (Monster, Prometheus) as Imperator Furiosa. The plot sees Max helping Furiosa in her attempt to free the enslaved wives of tyrannical ruler of the wastes, Immortan Joe, which…
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The NeverEnding Story [RSC Film Club 07]
by LimeGreenLegend- 2 followers
- 17 replies
- 4k views
This month we are stretching our imaginations to the limits as we explore the worlds of fantasy. The winning film is The NeverEnding Story, nominated by @Spinnaker1981, directed by Wolfgang Peterson (Air Force One, The Perfect Storm) in 1984. A film about the power of the imagination, the importance of self-indentity and the awesomeness of books, The NeverEnding Story can rightly sit up there with Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal in the pantheon of awesome 80s puppet fantasy movies. I haven't seen this since I was very young, and I can't remember much about it, but I do remember being traumatised by what happens to Artax the horse, and having the theme song…
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They Live [RSC Film Club 06]
by LimeGreenLegend- 1 follower
- 10 replies
- 2.5k views
This month's film club is all about b-movies, and when you look towards the upper end of that genre you start seeing the name John Carpenter quite a lot. Director of classic genre films like Halloween, The Thing, Assault on Precinct 13, Escape from New York and The Fog, the film of his we'll be watching this month is the anti-consumerism manifesto that is 1988's They Live, nominated by @Pb76. In my opinion the best film ever made that stars a wrestler (sorry Dwane), They Live is based on a short story, Eight O'Clock in the Morning, by Ray Nelson, from 1963, and stars "Rowdy" Roddy Piper as John Nada, a drifter who survives by working day labour in downtown LA. …
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Rush [Film Club Extra 02]
by LimeGreenLegend- 1 follower
- 9 replies
- 1.6k views
Our second Film Club Extra choice is the film Rush, suggested by @Beez, @djw180 and @Fido_le_muet to commemorate the life of legendary Formula 1 driver, Niki Lauda, who recently passed away. Directed by Ron Howard (Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind), the film tells the story of the heated rivalry between Lauda, played by Daniel Bruhl (Inglourious Basterds, Captain America: Civil War) and James Hunt, Chris Hemsworth (Thor) in the early to mid 70s. This film was critically acclaimed for it's race sequences, which are shot to show the pure power and danger of the sport, especially in those days. The performances by Bruhl and Hemsworth were also well reviewed, both re…
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The Crimson Rivers [RSC Film Club 04]
by LimeGreenLegend- 2 followers
- 15 replies
- 2.7k views
On the 22nd of March 1895, at the "Society for the Development of the National Industry" in Paris, 200 people witnessed the very first projected motion pictures in history. This makes France the most important country in film history. Thanks to pioneers like The Lumiere Brothers, Georges Melies, and The Pathe Brothers we are able to see things on the big screen that we could never possibly dream of. France didn't just invent cinema, they also gave us cinemas, and, with the publication of Cahiers du Cinema in 1951, gave us the birth of modern film theory and criticism. The writers at this magazine knew their stuff. Two of them went on to lead the French new wave…
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Chicago [RSC Film Club 02] 1 2
by LimeGreenLegend- 1 follower
- 42 replies
- 3.4k views
This month we're all singing and all dancing as we'll be watching Chicago, nominated by @Spinnaker1981 and @Danielle. The theme for March was musicals, and you'd be hard pressed to find a musical with a better pedigree than Chicago. Directed by Rob Marshall and based on the 1975 Broadway production, (which itself was based on a silent film from 1927, which was based on a 1926 play written by a journalist and based on real events) which was choreographed and directed by the legendary Bob Fosse, who basically invented jazz hands and was the man responsible for other classic musicals like Cabaret and the semi-autobiographical All That Jazz. Chicago became the fir…
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Gravity [Film Club Extra]
by LimeGreenLegend- 1 follower
- 17 replies
- 1.8k views
For those of you who wanted a second monthly slice of film club pie, here it is. @Con whittled down the nominations from this month to those he hasn't seen/finds most interesting and randomly selected a companion film to our main Film Club film, Aliens. That first selection is Alfonso Cuaron's Gravity. Starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, this is a story about isolation. Cuaron started off wanting to make a film about adversity and survival in hostile locations, and decided that space is the ultimate hostile location. The most startling thing about this film, for me, are the long tracking shots, unbroken sometimes for minutes, that really take …
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Aliens [RSC Film Club 03] 1 2
by LimeGreenLegend- 2 followers
- 44 replies
- 3.4k views
This month's genre is (after much debate) sci-fi thrillers set in space or on a different planet. I know. The winning film is Aliens, nominated by @Spinnaker1981, James Cameron's sequel to Ridley Scott's classic horror film, Alien, and considered to be one of the greatest sequels of all time alongside The Godfather Part II and T2: Judgement Day. Released in 1986, the film sees protagonist Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) returning to LV-426 with a group of space marines after contact is lost with the newly formed colony there. Cameron adopted the bigger is better philosophy for this film, giving us more aliens, more action and more gore than the first film, bu…
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The French Connection [RSC Film Club 01] 1 2 3
by LimeGreenLegend- 4 followers
- 59 replies
- 5.4k views
The first film for the RSC Film Club has been chosen, with The French Connection, picked by @Beez winning out over all of the other Best Picture winners. The theme for this month was Best Picture winners, with The French Connection winning in 1971, beating films like Fiddler on the Roof and A Clockwork Orange. It also picked up Oscars for best director (William Friedkin, who would later direct The Exorcist), best actor (Gene Hackman playing Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle), best adapted screenplay (Ernest Tidyman based on the book by Robin Moore), and best film editing. It received nominations for best supporting actor (Roy Scheider playing Buddy "Cloudy" Russo), best ci…
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225Rate the Last Film you Watched 2: Electric Boogaloo
What I Watched This Week #168 (Mar 17-23) Sisu dir. Jalmari Helander/2022/1h31m Sisu is a Finnish action film set during the latter stages of WWII in the Finnish countryside where a grizzled old gold-miner, Aatami (Jorma Tommila), has just struck the motherlode. Unfortunately he runs into a group of n*zis led by SS officer Bruno (Askel Hennie) who are retreating out of the country and they steal his stash. What they don't know is that he is a legendary badass soldier who then proceeds to go on a bloody rampage to get his gold back. There are few things more satisfying to see in a movie than n*zis getting absolutely brutalised (Hitler getting his face machine-gunned into Swiss cheese in Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds is a personal fav) and this delivers that by the blood and guts full bucket load. If you want to see a n*zi get exploded by having a landmine f*cking thrown directly at his face then this is the film for you. Tommila gives a great performance in the lead, even though his character doesn't have a single word of dialogue. This is a man who speaks with his actions. Plus he just looks like a badass, I can totally believe that he could take on an entire troop of n*zis and win. Hennie is also good, but his character is very one dimensional, but his presence is more symbolic here of how evil the n*zis were as a whole. If you want a straight forward and thrilling action film then you should check this out. 8/10 Breaking dir. Abi Damaris Corbin/2022/1h43m Based on a true story, Breaking stars John Boyega as Brian Brown-Easley, a former Marine suffering from severe PTSD who has had his VA benefits taken away, straight out of his bank account. Desperate and seeing no other option he holds up the bank with a bomb, taking two hostages. What follows is a tense standoff involving the police, the media and Brian, with Boyega's performance really carrying what is a pretty generic film. The way the public and media sympathy is on Brian's side as he's able to explain his situation put me in mind of Dog Day Afternoon - also based on a true story of another bank robbery gone wrong - but that just makes this film feel even blander. Now this isn't a bad film by any stretch of the imagination, it does its job well, but apart from Boyega's performance there isn't anything that really stands out. It did make me sympathise with the real Brian Brown-Easley as this is a tragic story from every angle, and it does a good job of showing who he was as a person with flashbacks showing him spending time with his young daughter and not just focusing on that day. 6.5/10 Furious 7 dir. James Wan/2015/2h17m Jason Statham enters the Fast and Furious series - after a post-credit teaser in the last film - as the brother of the baddie from the last film and he wants revenge (it's about family). Djimon Hounsou is also here as a totally underwritten bad guy who is totally forgettable and unnecessary and I don't know why he was there because Statham is already the bad guy. I can't even remember what relevance he had to the plot, if he had any at all. But I like Djimon Hounsou so it was nice just to see him I guess. I did have fun with this one, the less grounded the plots the more enjoyable they're becoming, especially since everyone is acting so seriously, particularly Vin Diesel. One aspect where this actually works is where they keep going on about family, their sincerity really makes me believe they care about each other, and that made the tribute to Paul Walker at the end of the film genuinely touching. 6/10 Le Corbeau dir. Henri-Georges Clouzot/1943/1h32m In this French mystery/thriller Pierre Fresnay plays Remy Germain, a doctor in a small village who is the victim of poison pen letters accusing him of having an affair with the wife of another doctor and performing illegal abortions. Soon other villagers start getting letters, all of them signed Le Corbeau - The Raven. As everyone's secrets start getting exposed, desperation to find The Raven grows. This is a very dark film made during a dark time in France's history, and the way the film shows how easily people can be turned against one another speaks to what was going on at the time. The actual mystery is well written, with the audience left guessing right up to the shocking finale, and it's all shot in a film-noir style that really sets the tone perfectly. It's a little slow at the start, but the third act really ramps up the pace as we start eliminating possible suspects, leading to what I think is a satisfying reveal. The performances are all good, especially that of the person eventually revealed as The Raven, but this is more about the atmosphere. 8/10 The Electric State dir. Joe Russo, Anthony Russo/2025/2h5m The Electric State is the latest film from the Russo brothers, directors of Avengers Infinity War and Endgame, and apparently cost Netflix 320 million dollars to make. It looks alright, and by that I mean the effects look alright, the actual art and production design is bland and derivative nostalgia bait, but it doesn't look like 320 million dollars. The actual plot, adapted from a graphic novel, sees Millie Bobby Brown play an orphaned teenager living in an alternate history 90's after some war with robots or something. She has to find her brother, who she thought was dead, but has been kidnapped by an evil tech guy played by Stanley Tucci and is now in a coma with his consciousness in a robot based on an old cartoon character and is the power source for his new VR tech I think. Also Chris Pratt is there doing the same character he's been doing for the last decade. There are some things I liked about this. Stanley Tucci is always good and is almost able to give his character some depth. Brian Cox voices a baseball robot, that was fun. I'm struggling now. Millie Bobby Brown's American accent is passable. I guess it's not the worst film I've seen this year, that would be Borderlands. This is slightly less obnoxious. 3/10 Cars 2 dir. John Lasseter/2011/1h46m The first non Toy Story sequel for Pixar kicked off an era of sequels where out of their next ten films only four were original. But at least the plot here is very different from the original, which was all about slowing down and enjoying the smaller pleasures of life. Cars 2 is a spy thriller where Mater the Tow Truck (Larry the Cable Guy) is mistaken for a secret agent by superspy Finn McMissile (Michael Caine). He is caught up in a plot involving eco-friendly oil invented by billionaire Miles Axelrod (Eddie Izzard), who is also hosting a worldwide grand prix in which Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) is competing. There's a lot going on, but I do like how they've decided to go in such a mad direction after the relatively grounded first film. My biggest problem with this film is the same one I had with the first, and that's how much I f*cking hate Larry the Cable Guy and his stupid f*cking voice. And now he's basically the lead character, with more time given to his plot than McQueen's. 5/10 Across 110th Street dir. Barry Shear/1972/1h42m This film opens with two nobody crooks stealing a few hundred grand from a Mafia deal in Harlem, killing them and a couple of cops in the process. This threatens to incite a race riot if the two detectives assigned to the case can't find who did it. They are the gruff, no nonsense, racist Italian Captain Mattelli (Anthony Quinn), and the Black liberal Lt. Pope (Yaphet Kotto). A gritty crime film that's a perfect time capsule of the era, this is both very real feeling and stylised at the same time. There's a brilliant use of location shooting and handheld camera that give it a raw, almost documentary like feel. Quinn and Kotto are excellent as the diametrically opposed duo, butting heads while still trying to pull in the right direction. Their relationship is symbolic of the film as a whole, a powder keg just waiting to go up, and that level of tension is sustained throughout the film. The cherry on top is the brilliant soundtrack, which includes the legendary title song by Bobby Womack. 9/10 Lime's Film of the Week!- 2
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225Rate the Last Film you Watched 2: Electric Boogaloo
Alien Romulus (2024) dir Fede Alvarez Another film in the Alien franchise. More of the same reasonably high quality sci-fi horror, quite gory at times with dark, atmospheric, industrial looking sets. A cast of relatively unknown actors do a good job playing a group of young off-worlders, including an android, who see a way to escape their dreary mining colony planet by boarding an abandoned space craft to use it's resources to get their ship to another planet. But this craft is research station, with all human crew dead, because, of course, it had an alien on board. It then becomes the familiar last-woman-standing as one by one they meet the usual face-hugging / chest-bursting or other death by xenomorph. There is a lot that refers to one of more of the original films, including an appearance by an Android “played” by an AI version of Ian Holm (Ash in the Aliens). It is essentially a sequel to Alien that could be happening before, after or even about the same time as Aliens. So it fits into the original films rather than the newer ones from the 2010s. Although I like some of the references to the original films the problem with this for me is it has very little that we have not already seen in those originals. It does not bring much that is new to the franchise, unlike Prometheus and Covenant. Whilst I would have seen it as quite a good film if it was the 2nd or 3rd film in the franchise, I really don't see it adds anything more to the story. So it's fine if you just want more of the same, but for me if you are going to keep adding to a franchise the films needs to bring something original, some aspect of the overall plot not explored before, and this does not do that. I was actually getting slightly bored towards the end and would have been quite happy with it finishing maybe 20 minutes earlier. 6 / 10- 1
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