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
- 6.2k 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
- 2.7k 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
- 2.6k 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
- 3.5k 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
- 1.9k 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
- 3.5k 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
- 5.6k 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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0Atomized Frogger
Up n Atomizers and NPC traffic on high. Each frog for themself. 5 min. https://socialclub.rockstargames.com/job/gtav/Ontwci9ufUu7sojP2x-DBg- 1
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234Rate the Last Film you Watched 2: Electric Boogaloo
What I Watched This Week #172 (Apr 14-20) Alien dir. Ridley Scott/1979/1h57m One of the greatest sci-fi horror films of all time, Ridley Scott's Alien stars Sigourney Weaver as a member of a deep space mining crew who takes a detour to an SOS message on the long journey back to Earth, finding a crashed ship full of eggs. My favourite thing about this film after seeing it so many times is how worn and lived in the ship is. I totally believe that it's real and functional and that this crew has spent months living in it. The opening sequence where we explore the empty ship while the crew is in cryosleep not only builds tension but allows us to take in the incredible details in the production design. Speaking of design, H.R. Giger's design for the xenomorph is the best in movie history (though the lil guy who bursts out of John Hurt's chest is kinda cute and goofy looking). The aggressively ph*llic look of it works well with the very male perspective fear of r*pe and childbirth. The whole cast is excellent, alongside Weaver and Hurt you have Ian Holm, Harry Dean Stanton and Yaphet Kotto, the latter two making a great comedic double team. 9.5/10 Lime's Film of the Week! Now You See Me dir. Louis Leterrier/2013/1h56m Now You See Me tells the story of a group of Las Vegas magicians known as the Four Horsemen (Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Isla Fisher, Dave Franco) who rob banks live during their show, distributing the money to their audience. They are being tracked by Mark Ruffalo's FBI agent Rhodes who is determined to uncover their secrets. Totally forgettable fluff, there are some nice moments in here, and I liked the twist at the end even though you can see it coming a mile away. The big trick showpieces are entertaining in that artificial Vegas way that also feels hollow and meaningless. My biggest gripe here is with the four main characters and that I didn't like any of them. Like real magicians I found them to be annoying and so far up their own *sses that I was actively rooting against them every step of the way. The exception is Harrelson, though he comes close at times. There's solid support from Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman, with Ruffalo giving the best performance in the film. This is the definition of inoffensive cinematic background noise. 5/10 Cinderella dir. Georges Méliès/1899/6m Georges Méliès here with some more ground breaking work from the dawn of cinema. Not only is this the first film adaptation of Cinderella, it's also the first film adaptation of any fairy tale and also the first film to use dissolves to transition between scenes (with this being his first film with more than one scene). Watching this is to watch the evolution of film in real time, and, like the rest of his work, it's nothing less than magical. This is Méliès becoming more innovative and inventive with his films becoming more complex and technically demanding. The sets and costumes are beautifully detailed and like illustrations come to life. It's amazing to me that a film from the 19th century can still be so magical. 8/10 How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies dir. Pat Boonnitipat/2024/2h7m This family drama/comedy from Thailand stars Putthipong Assaratanakul as M, a lazy young man who has dropped out of college to try and start a streaming career ("wow four viewers" his mother chides early on). When he learns that his grandmother (Usha Seamkhum) has cancer he thinks that he can weasel his way to the top of her will by moving in with her to care for her. A tender and gentle film that also surprises with some pretty dark humour, I found this to be incredibly charming with two excellent lead performances from Assaratanakul and Seamkhum. Seamkhum is particularly impressive in her late in life film debut as the wily old woman who sees through all the bullsh*t from her grandson, but also sees something of herself in him. The plot is fairly predictable - of course the two will grow closer to each other and form a real bond by the time she dies - but the journey to that point, and the touching epilogue, I really enjoyed. There's a lot of family drama with the grandmother's children but it always feels close to reality and not emotionally manipulative or overly melodramatic at any point. 9/10 Shock Treatment dir. Jim Sharman/1981/1h34m Shock Treatment is a sequel to one of my all time favourite films, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and picks up with Brad and Janet (now played by Cliff DeYoung and Jessica Harper) a few years later with their marriage now on the rocks. To rectify this they appear on a TV show with the result being Brad getting committed to a psychiatric hospital run by Dr. Cosmo McKinley (Richard O'Brien) and Janet getting groomed for superstardom. This is perhaps even more bizarre than Rocky Horror, certainly more cynical, with the world now seeming to exists as a series of TV shows, a live studio audience never leaving, sleeping in their seats as the film happens on screens all around them. It's a strange dystopia that seems to predict the dominance TV would have over our lives to an even greater extent in the era of commercialism and Reganomics. If there's not a camera on you then you don't exist, like the antithesis of Rocky Horror's theme of "don't dream it, be it". Many of the Rocky Horror cast returns with the exception of Susan Sarandon and Barry Bostwick as Janet and Brad (though DeYoung and especially Harper do an excellent job in the roles) and most notably Tim Curry. I kept imagining him in the role played by Barry Humphries (most famous for playing Dame Edna Everage), a garishly sleazy host called Bert Schnick. Humphries is great, but we all know Curry would have been better. Another slight let down for me is the soundtrack. As a musical this doesn't really compare with Rocky Horror, though there are some catchy tunes in there, the main theme still popping into my head occasionally. 9/10 #21xoxo dir. Sine Ozbilge, Imge Ozbilge/2019/9m This animated short from Belgium shows a girl (Indra de Bruyn) and her experiences with online dating, hooking up with several men before finding a genuine connection. The most striking thing about this film are the visuals, with the film being rotoscoped, a process where live action footage is traced over by animators giving it natural movement, a process used by Disney for Snow White back in 1937. Here it's given a thoroughly modern makeover, with the screen bombarded with text and images and memes representing the experience of being chronically online. The aesthetic also calls to mind pop art of the 60's, showing that the digital world may be new but the problems of finding a partner are anything but. It's at times overwhelming, purposefully so, but there's still a cohesion between all these elements. The ending is a bit on the nose but it's well done, wrapping the whole thing up maybe a bit too neatly. 7/10 Toomas Beneath the Valley of the Wild Wolves dir. Chintis Lundgren, Drasko Ivezic/2019/18m Another animated short, this time from Estonia, this tells the story of Toomas (Drasko Ivezic), a wolf who is fired after turning down his boss's advances. With a wife and children to support he turns to prostitution and then gay p*rn. Meanwhile, his wife Viivi (Chintis Lundgren) is learning some things about herself thanks to militant feminist Alexandra Horn-Eye (Lee Delong). This reminded me a lot of Bug Diner, another charming and cheeky animation about sexuality and relationships starring anthropomorphic animals. That was stop motion while this is animated in a simple yet effective style, the linework wobbling between frames like Doug, the 90's cartoon. Like Bug Diner, this is also a very mature film with more human characters than a lot of live action films that tackle the same subjects. 8.5/10 No Home But Cinema: The Spaces of Chantal Akerman dir. Jessica McGoff/2025/14m (no trailer for this, so here's one for a similar film) This short essay film explores the films of Chantal Akerman through her use of space and locations, how she films them, how she moves through them and what they represent. McGoff doesn't narrate this film, rather her essay is presented as text on the screen over clips from films that illustrate her points. I like this approach and how it's executed. The text isn't presented in blocks but line by line and is edited with the rhythm of the film clips so that they're unobtrusive and allow you to fully immerse in the various worlds of Akerman. This doesn't go too in depth with any of her observations as they are things you will pick up on by just watching the films, but it would work as a good introduction to her and what to look out for in her work. 7/10 Hotel Monterey dir. Chantal Akerman/1973/1h3m (no trailer so have an extended clip) Staying with Chantal Akerman, Hotel Monterey is an observational documentary in which she explores the titular hotel, a cheap one in New York where she stayed when she first moved to the city, from the lobby to the roof. It starts off at night where her camera captures people milling about in the lobby, taking the elevators up and down. She then prowls the corridors like a ghost, her very formally structured compositions bringing out the textures of the grimy yellow walls. Methodically we move upwards until we are on the roof, it is day now, and the feeling of escape is palpable. We do this all in silence, and I mean total silence. No music, no background noise, nothing. Not only does this make us even more aware of what we're seeing on screen, but it also makes us aware of our own environment. An exploration of space is happening on the screen and in real life at the same time and it's kind of amazing once you notice that. It's like Akerman speaking out of time saying here I am, where are you? This also feels like a prelude to her masterful film News From Home, in which she takes the same approach but expands it to the whole city, though this time with sound. This totally isn't for everyone, it's not even close to what you'd call entertaining, but if you give it a chance you'll get so much out of it. 8.5/10- 1
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234Rate the Last Film you Watched 2: Electric Boogaloo
Local Hero (1983) dir Bill Forsyth A great early 80s British light comedy drama. Peter Reigert (who I have never seen in anything else) plays Mac, a lawyer / accountant / fixer working for Texas based Happer oil. The CEO, Mr Happer (Burt Lancaster), sends Mac to oversee the purchase of an entire Scottish fishing village that they want to demolish to build a new oil terminal. Mac expects at least some of the villagers, led by their lawyer / accountant / hotel manager Gordon Urquart (Denis Lawson - Wedge from Star Wars), to put up somewhat of a fight. But they are not quite the simple folk he expects. They already know what is going on and Urquart intends to squeeze as much cash as possible from the big oil company. It also co-stars a young Peter Capaldi, almost unrecognisable at times, as Oldsen, a Scottish Happer Oil employee assigned to help Mac and Jenny Seagrove as marine biologist Marina, working for them in what she knows is really just a job to generate good PR in case of environmental problems. Marina has slightly webbed feet, making her seem a bit like a mermaid as she swims, which her job requires a lot of. This is possibly a nod to the Jerry Anderson puppet show Stingray that had a mermaid called Marina. (And maybe having watched Team America last week this is what subconsciously made me decide to watch this film that I have seen many times before). It also features a host of other faces, mainly Scottish actors, familiar to anyone who has watched a lot of British TV over the years, like me. But sometimes it takes a while to recognise them, because this was made over 40 years ago. One of the non-Scots is Christopher Rozycki, who is great as the captain of a Soviet fishing trawler that makes frequent visits to the village. He quite clearly is not a believer in the political ideology of his homeland. He has a great line I wish I could remember word for word, but at one point he says to Mac something like “Don't look so worried. You are doing a great thing here. You are making people very rich!”. It is a beautifully made film, technically very, very good. It's set mainly in the village, but starts in Houston and switches back there a couple of times and has some stunning scenes of the Scottish countryside and coast. There's no great tension to the story, no massive plot twists. It's quite a gentle tale of Mac falling in love with the village he has basically come to destroy, but the locals just wanting the money. Forsyth got a well deserved BAFTA for the direction and a nomination for the original script. It also got a number of other worthy nominations including Chris Menges' cinematography and Mark Knopfler's modern score that includes the iconic “Going home” guitar – saxophone instrumental that accompanies the end credits. The only acting one was for Lancaster but the rest of the cast are very good, even down to some quite minor roles. I do have to pick it up on a couple of factual issues. The village is shown on a map in North West Scotland, but the oil is (was) all on the east, in the North Sea between Scotland and Norway. And I know, from a friend who used to live there and remembers the filming, it was mainly filmed on location in various villages on the east coast. The other thing might have been a deliberate joke at the expense of Hollywood. This is when Marina is showing Oldsen a colony of what are described as grey seals, but what we see on screen are quite clearly sea-lions, the sort you might well see in California but certainly not Scotland! Those don't really detract from the overall film though which is one of my all time favourites. 10 / 10- 2
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