Rate the Last Film you Watched 2: Electric Boogaloo

[LimeGreenLegend 4,330]

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!

Edited March 29 by LimeGreenLegend

[djw180 7,104]

Delicious (2025) dir Nele Mueller-Stöfen

 

 

A drama / thriller that could also be classed as mild horror. It's a reasonably original story which, judging by IMDB reviews, a lot of people just did not understand or reacted badly to what they saw as a political message they disagree with. I don't think it really had a political message. It just made use of very clear, obvious contrasts between how wealthy and not-wealthy people live. The basic plot is a middle class, German, stereotypical family (Mum, Dad, Son & Daughter) are on holiday in a villa in the south of France. Following an incident on the way home from a visit to a hotel restaurant they end up taking in a young Spanish woman, Theodora, to cook and clean for them. You can tell from the start that there is going to be more to the story that what you can see at first. You know Theodora and her boyfriend engineered the situation and it's related to things that happened in the hotel. And it's also probably related to protests going on in Marseilles that we see at the start of the film, about the cost of living for those on low paid jobs like waitresses, maids, porters etc. It has hints of films like The Killing of a Sacred Deer in that its about a young person working their way into the lives of the members of a wealthier family, and it clearly is going to end badly for some of them. The family have their issues and are not quite the ideal happy family they appear to be. It's well made, decent acting from Valerie Pachner (Esther, the mother) and Carla Diaz (Theodora). There's some nice cinematography; wide shots almost symmetric around one of the characters, sea and landscapes from unusual angles, etc. It has some good music too, a mix of classical and modern. A couple of plot elements are a little too unsubtle or implausible. I'm also not quite sure whether there was supposed to be a supernatural element to it or if certain things we see were just in a character's imagination. I enjoyed it and think it's well worth watching.

 

8 / 10

 

[LimeGreenLegend 4,330]

What I Watched This Week #169 (Mar 24-30)

Angel Face

dir. Otto Preminger/1952/1h31m 

Angel Face is a film noir starring Robert Mitchum as ambulance driver Frank Jessup who, after responding to a call at the posh Tremayne estate, meets the manipulative femme-fatale daughter of the family, Diane (Jean Simmons).  After becoming a driver for the family the parents are soon killed in a car accident with Diane being the sole heir.  The plot for this is fairly straightforward and predictable for the most part (that ending however really shocked me with how suddenly violent it is) but the two lead performances and the prevailing atmosphere of nihilistic cynicism really make this worth watching.  There's a real sense of sad desperation in Mitchum's performance as he can see the trap he's willingly walking into but he just can't help himself, with Simmons excellent as the spider at the centre of the web.  The direction isn't flashy, for the most part it's quite unobtrusive, but it does make the house feel more claustrophobic as the film progresses, making us feel trapped alongside Frank and Diane.  8/10

Gentlemen of Nerve

dir. Charlie Chaplin/1914/15m 

This early Chaplin short is set at an automobile race, with Chaplin, credited as playing Mr. Wow-Wow, causing his usual chaos alongside his partner Mr. Walrus (Mack Swain).  He flirts with a woman (Mabel Normand, his co-star for many early films before moving studios and starting a partnership with Edna Purviance), gets in a fight with a policeman, and finds several new ways of falling on his *ss.  This could be confused with any number of his films from this period if it wasn't for the setting of a race track.  Watching these old-timey cars in action was genuinely thrilling because there are little to no health and safety precautions that I could see.  Aside from that this is fairly standard fare from the Chaplin of this period.  5/10

Paris Blues

dir. Martin Ritt/1961/1h38m 

Paul Newman and Sidney Poitier star as Ram and Eddie, American jazz musicians living and working in Paris who meet and fall in love with a pair of tourists, Lillian and Connie (Joanne Woodward, Diahann Carroll), and must soon make the decision between staying in Paris or going home to America.  In terms of tone and atmosphere this is one of the coolest films I've ever seen.  There's some really immersive location shooting that plunges you into the counterculture world of the jazz scene, a brilliant soundtrack, and Newman and Poitier being two of the most handsome and charismatic men you've ever seen.  There's even a cameo from Louis Armstrong as Wild Man Moore who just lights up the screen whenever he appears.  I feel like the story hints at something more but doesn't commit in the end when it comes to the relationships.  At first it seems like Ram would end up with Connie, who is Black, saying in their first flirtatious meeting that all white women look the same to him, but eventually she ends up with Eddie and Ram hooks up with Lillian.  There are also scenes between Eddie and Connie where he explains that the reason he doesn't want to go back to America is because he doesn't feel welcome there as a Black man, but again this is underdeveloped.  If the film committed to actually exploring these things then I think it would be even better, but as it is this is still great.  8.5/10

Woman of the Hour

dir. Anna Kendrick/2023/1h34m 

Watched on the strength of @djw180's review, this film is based on the true story of an aspiring actress, Sheryl (Kendrick, who also directs), who appeared on The Dating Game where one of her potential suitors is a serial killer, Rodney Alcala (Daniel Zovatto).  One of my favourite things about this film is the non linear structure.  The film takes place during the shooting of the show with flashbacks showing us Rodney's past crimes, escalating the tension and sense of danger.  Zovatto gives a really strong performance as the killer, brimming with charisma and charm but the flashbacks give us the context to see the malice and threat behind every word.  Kendrick is also very good even though she spends most of the film sat in a chair on the set of the show.  What lets this film down somewhat is that it's too funny at times, feeling almost like a comedy, especially at the start.  This kind of undercuts some of the tension of the film, and feels like Kendrick using her roots and experience in comedy as a crutch in what is her first film as director.  I think if she showed a bit more confidence in her abilities as a filmmaker and played this straighter then this would be an even better thriller.  7/10

Koyaanisqatsi

dir. Godfrey Reggio/1982/1h26m 

Classed as a documentary, Koyaanisqatsi - a Hopi language word that means life out of balance - is more of an experience than a film.  With no narrative or dialogue the whole thing is a visual poem that seems to chart the progress of humanity from our cave dwelling days up to the contemporaneous modern world of New York City.  We start with a rocket taking off, then cave paintings.  For half an hour we see the natural world, no trace of human life.  Then explosions, metal, machinery.  Man is here.  New York is overwhelming.  Footage sped up so the mass of humanity flows like blood through the streets.  There's a moment in all of this where we slow down and focus on the faces of strangers in the street.  Shots almost like portraits, putting a face to this world.  All of this set to an incredible score by Philip Glass.  A modern Man With a Movie Camera, this shows how film can be used to tell a story and elicit emotion in unconventional ways and is honestly one of the best films I've seen in a long time.  10/10 Lime's Film of the Week!

Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling

dir. Richard Pryor/1986/1h37m 

Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling is the sole directorial effort from one of, if not the greatest stand up comedian of all time, Richard Pryor.  It is a deeply personal and autobiographical film (though he says it isn't) in which he plays a world famous comedian who sees his life flash before his eyes as he lies in a hospital bed, close to death after setting himself on fire during a crack binge.  His soul leaves his body and, after being shocked and disgusted with what he's done to himself, travels back through his past, all the way from his childhood where he was raised in a brothel, through to his worldwide fame and total breakdown, to see where it all went wrong.  Like his stand up routines this is, for the most part, painfully honest, raw like an open wound, and criminally funny.  Pryor, as good as he is at comedy, is almost as good at drama- see also his performance in Blue Collar where he is every bit Harvey Keitel's equal - and there are some really heart wrenching scenes here.  The ending where he gives a eulogy to Jo Jo, putting all the pain of his past to rest, was really powerful while also being really funny.  There are times when it feels a bit safe and conventional, like he's holding back a bit, but this is a must watch if you're a fan of Pryor.  8.5/10

Return to the Edge of the World

dir. Michael Powell/1978/24m 

(no trailer for this, so here's one for the original film) 

This short documentary is the last film from one of the greatest filmmakers in British history, Michael Powell (his film Peeping Tom, released the same year as Psycho, is, in my opinion, a better and more shocking slasher film than Hitchcock's classic).  Here he returns to the island of Foula, in the Shetlands off the Scottish coast, where he filmed his breakout film The Edge of the World in 1936.  That film was based on a true story of an island with an aging population and the young folk all gone off to the mainland that had to evacuate and leave their way of life behind.  Here he finds the local community still going strong, with a lot of the film being about them rather then reminiscing about the past.  Also taking the trip with Powell is the lead actor from the original film, John Laurie (anyone of a certain age in the UK will recognise him as Private Frazer from Dad's Army and his iconic catchphrase "we're dooooooomed").  He is a wonderfully warm presence with a voice I could listen to all day.  This makes for a beautiful but bittersweet bookend for Powell's career.  7/10

[Sinister 2,585]

Went to see the Minecraft movie last Friday with my Tech and our son. Can't say no when my son offers IMAX tickets.

As a Minecraft player I wasn't expecting much from this movie. Was surprised to actually enjoy it. Sure it's not some deep story or anything life changing but it made me laugh and was overall enjoyable. They stuck to how the game works in most ways while taking liberties with a few things. Has some annoyances that make it a watch once and be done type of movie though.

3 out of 5 stars.

[LimeGreenLegend 4,330]

What I Watched This Week #170 (Mar 31 - Apr 6)

The Fate of the Furious

dir. F. Gary Gray/2017/2h16m 

The eighth film in the franchise sees Dominic (Vin Diesel) do the worst thing imaginable, betray his family.  But he's only doing it because he's being coerced by cyberterrorist Cipher (Charlize Theron), with his gang, led by The Rock (The Rock) and newly turned good guy Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham), having to hunt him down and stop him.  This is a big, dumb, fun Bond film that ended up in the wrong franchise but somehow works and is my favourite so far.  I think this is also the best directed film in the series, Gray's first in the franchise, with some excellent action set pieces and fight scenes that defy all logic.  I also think it's impressive that a film this deep into its run can attract such a good cast.  Theron is really good as the villain, and I also loved Kurt Russell as mysterious government agent Mr. Nobody and, in a really fun cameo, Helen Mirren as Shaw's aggressively Cockney mother Queenie.  I never thought I'd say this, but I think I'm a fan of the Fast and Furious franchise.  7/10

Two short films by Georges Méliès:

A Nightmare

1896/1m 

The Infernal Cauldron

1903/2m 

These two shorts are from the father of movie magic, Georges Méliès, a French stage magician who, while tinkering with a newly bought film camera, invented special effects by accident and was one of the first filmmakers who was able to show what this new medium was really capable of.  The first film sees him playing a sleeping man who is tormented by various things he's scared of, including a giant moon with a menacing face - a recurring image in his films, most iconically in A Trip to the Moon - clowns and, unfortunately, Black people.  The second film has him in the role of a green demon - a lot of his films were painted by hand frame by frame so they had colour before colour film was a thing - consigning some people to hell by throwing them into a giant cauldron.  The sheer inventiveness and creativity in his films makes them still a joy to watch today - racism aside - and these shorter ones are just a taste of what he's able to do in his masterful longer films like The Kingdom of the Fairies and The Impossible Voyage.  Respectively I'll give these a 6/10 and 8/10

Brave

dir. Brenda Chapman, Mark Andrews/2012/1h33m 

Pixar takes us to the magical ancient Scottish Highlands where Merida (Kelly Macdonald) is the princess of a kingdom ruled by King Fergus (Billy Connolly) and Queen Elinor (Emma Thompson).  Elinor wants to prepare Merida for marriage, whereas Merida wants to be free to make her own decisions.  Thanks to a visit to a local witch (Julie Walters), Merida gets a cursed wish and inadvertently turns her mother into a bear.  I'm a big fan of the setting of this film, it feels unlike anything Pixar has done before, and some of the landscape shots are gorgeous, but the story really drags, with a lot of obvious filler thrown in to pad the runtime.  I also didn't really like the main character even though I could sympathise with her not wanting to just do what she's supposed to do.  What this film has in its favour is the legendary Billy Connolly who I love in anything he does, and he's great here.  I just wish Disney had the b*lls to release the profanity riddled outtakes that I'm sure exists in their vault somewhere.  I also appreciate that this is an original film in an era of Pixar sequels (this came between Cars 2 and Monsters University), but that's not enough to get it more than a 6.5/10

65

dir. Scott Beck, Bryan Woods/2023/1h32m 

Set 65 million years ago this is a sci-fi thriller that stars Adam Driver as a deep space explorer of an alien race who crash lands on prehistoric Earth where he and a young girl, Koa (Ariana Greenblatt), are the only survivors.  The two don't speak the same language, making it harder for them to work together to not get eaten by dinosaurs and make it to an escape pod before the giant extinction level asteroid hits the planet (spoilers: they don't have long).  This is from the same directors of the recent Hugh Grant religious thriller Heretic, which I enjoyed quite a bit, but this is just bland bland bland.  The premise is cool but they've managed to execute it in the most vanilla way possible.  The two performances are good, with Driver really putting a lot of effort into basically nothing, but all of his dialogue was so hard to concentrate on because it was so dull.  I also thought the dinosaurs just looked weird and never really felt like a threat.  There was more tension from the ticking clock of the asteroid than from anything earthbound.  4/10

Law Abiding Citizen

dir. F. Gary Gray/2009/1h49m 

My second F. Gary Gray film of the week, this one stars Gerard Butler as Clyde who, after his family are killed during a break in, decides to take revenge on not only the murderers but also the lawyer who got them a plea bargain that set them free, Nick (Jamie Foxx).  I don't know what it is but there's something about this film that makes it feel like it should have come out in the mid 90's starring Nicolas Cage.  It wants to be both a serious legal thriller and an overblown action film but it never really commits to either.  The various traps and gadgets that Clyde creates to take his revenge are well executed but it becomes ridiculous in the third act, culminating in what was to me a pretty bad ending.  Still, I enjoyed the scenes between Butler and Foxx, and I always like seeing Colm Meaney pop up in stuff, here with a sizeable supporting role as a detective trying to stop Clyde's murderous plans.  6/10

Come Drink with Me

dir. King Hu/1966/1h31m 

This influential martial arts film stars Cheng Pei-Pei as daughter of the local governor who has a secret alias as Golden Swallow, a sword for hire.  Her latest job is very personal as she has to rescue her brother who has been kidnapped by a gang led by Jade Faced Tiger (Chen Hung-Lieh).  Helping her on her quest is Drunken Cat (Elliot Ngok Wah), who has a secret of his own.  This is both graceful - Pei-Pei was a trained ballet dancer, not martial artist - and brutally bloody, and incredibly gorgeous to look at with some beautiful production and costume/make-up design.  Pei-Pei is great in the lead, being both demure and deadly at the same time, with Ngok Wah having a lot of fun as her playfully drunk sidekick.  I did find the plot to be a bit too convoluted for what it is, mostly with the plot about Drunken Cat's past, but it's worth it for the climactic mountainside showdown.  8/10 Lime's Films of the Week!

Two short films by Phoebe Jane Hart:

JamieSonShine

2020/5m 

Bug Diner

2024/7m 

I'm finishing off the week with two very different shorts from Phoebe Jane Hart.  The first is a very personal experimental documentary about her older brother and how his schizophrenia has affected their relationship.  A mixture of live action stop motion and animation, this feels like we're getting a small glimpse into their world, and it's able to convey so much love and empathy without every seeming trite or sentimental.  The second film is a stop motion film set in a diner staffed and visited by a selection of different anthropomorphic animals and insects who all have very human problems with their relationships.  There's a pair of grasshoppers having marital issues but the husband becomes aroused at the thought of his wife with another man, an anteater with the hots for a squirrel, and the fly waitress can't stop fantasising about the mole chef's hot *ss.  Weird, crude but strangely very relatable.  These are Hart's only two films so far, but I can't wait to see what she does next.  I'll give these a combined 8/10

Edited April 11 by LimeGreenLegend

[djw180 7,104]

Team America: World Police (2004) dir Trey Parker

 

 

 

A film from the makers of South Park, so you should know what to expect; totally irreverent, doesn't care who it offends, anything and anyone can and will be made fun of, with some great comedy songs and few Star Wars references thrown in. It's made with puppets in in the style of Thunderbirds and the other Gerry Anderson shows from the 60s/70s/80s. The title refers to an international crime fighting force with a very gung-ho attitude. So long as they get the bad guys, it doesn't matter who or what else gets hurt or destroyed in the process, even if they end up leaving an even bigger trail of destruction than the one they were trying to prevent. They recruit a new member, a Broadway actor, because they need someone to “act like a terrorist”. They are up against a wave of attacks, organised, behind the scenes, by North Korea's then dictator Kim Jong Il (the father of the current one). He is hosting a “peace conference” for all world leaders to hide his true intents. He has enlisted the assistance of F.A.G. (the Film Actors Guild), a group of Hollywood actors lead by Alec Baldwin and including Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, Samuel L Jackson, Helen Hunt and many more, who hate Team America. Just to be clear for anyone who has no idea what this film is; none of those people are in the film, it's puppet versions of them. A puppet Michael More also makes an appearance protesting against Team America. And all the voices are done by the same sort of people who voice South Park

It doesn't take sides. I don't think it's trying to make any political points. I'm not really sure you can even call it satire because, just like South Park, Parker and Stone are simply having a laugh in their own way and doing what they think is funny for no other reason than comedy. Some good aspects to point out. They chose to make this with puppets and I'm sure with modern technology they could have made them a lot more realistic than Thunderbirds, especially when it comes to how they walk. But other than the mouths moving better in sync with the dialogue, they don't look that different, and you can clearly see the strings. The puppets are obviously small, so the film is mainly made on model sets. But they have a couple of scenes using real-world backgrounds, so the puppets look really tiny – for comic effect. There's one hilarious scene in which a couple of characters are attacked by what are supposed to be black panthers, but they use domestic cats instead. Then what I think is the best scene, the s*x scene. This would have been extremely graphic if it used human actors. It would have been fairly graphic if the puppets had g*nitals. But they don't. So it's just two puppets, minus their clothes, playing out various s*x positions.

I have not seen this in full since I saw it at the cinema back when it first came out. It was not as funny as I remembered, but still a very novel idea.

 

7/10

[LimeGreenLegend 4,330]

What I Watched This Week #171 (Apr 7-13)

Captain America: Brave New World

dir. Julius Onah/2025/1h59m 

The latest entry in the MCU sees Anthony Mackie take up the shield as Captain America for the first time (on the big screen at least, I've not seen the TV show, which made a lot of this quite confusing), getting caught up in an international incident that I honestly can't remember anything about.  The entire time I was just waiting for Harrison Ford, playing newly elected president Thaddeus Ross, turn into a big red Hulk, which is all I knew of this going in.  It's actually quite amazing that I can't remember any of the actual plot because most of the film is made up of people spouting exposition at each other in bland locations.  The villain, played by Tim Blake Nelson, looks so stupid that I thought his reveal was a joke after being kept hidden in the shadows for a lot of the run time, but no, that's the look they actually went with.  I don't care if it's accurate to the comic books, it looks f*cking stupid on film.  Mackie and Ford both give decent performances, and and I liked Danny Ramirez as Cap's new sidekick Joaquin Torres, but this just feels like content churned out to meet a schedule drawn up by committee.  3/10

Mickey 17

dir. b*ng Joon Ho/2025/2h17m 

Robert Pattinson stars as Mickey Barnes, a man who, to get away from some dangerous people he owes money to, signs up as an expendable on a colonisation voyage to a distant planet.  His job is to perform all of the most dangerous tasks and occasionally act as a lab rat, and each time he dies they just print out a new one, an act made illegal on Earth.  This is director b*ng's follow up to his Oscar winning masterpiece Parasite, and while this film shares similar themes with its attack on the elite it comes at it with a very different tone.  This leans heavily into comedy, with Pattinson giving an almost slapstick performance at times.  His whiny, weedy accent also took me by surprise, but it really does fit the character.  Mark Ruffalo as failed politician Kenneth Marshall, the leader of the colony, also gives a very broad comedic performance, similar to the one he gave in Poor Things, and he steals every scene he's in.  I had a lot of fun watching this but it all feels kind of inconsequential and throwaway, like all of the clones of Mickey, and a little short of b*ng's best films like Parasite, Memories of Murder or Mother.  But this is still an excellently crafted film with great supporting performances from Toni Collette, Steven Yeun, Naomi Ackie, and British comedian Tim Key as a man dressed as a pigeon.  8/10

The Foreigner

dir. Martin Campbell/2017/1h53m 

The Foreigner is an action thriller starring Jackie Chan as Quan Ngoc Minh, a London restaurant owner whose daughter is killed in an IRA bombing.  He suspects that politician and former IRA member Liam Hennessey (Pierce Brosnan) knows something about it, and seeing that he's former Chinese special forces he'll stop at nothing to find out what.  A conventional yet well made film from the director of two of the best Bond films: Goldeneye and Casino Royale, what really kept me hooked here was the totally serious performance from Chan, something I've never seen before.  That extends to the fight scenes where there's none of his usual fun and games with random props.  Here he just wants to hurt people.  There's a haunted look in his eyes that he has for most of the film that feels so real and full of pain.  Brosnan is also very good as a politician with a murky past, and he does a good job at keeping us guessing as to how much he actually knows.  7/10

Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw

dir. David Leitch/2019/2h17m 

The Fast and Furious franchise takes a little detour with this spinoff film starring The Rock and Jason Statham as the titular Hobbs and Shaw who must team up to defeat Idris Elba's evil cyborg Brixton who is searching for a virus that could wipe out humanity.  The virus is in the hands of Shaw's sister Hattie (Vanessa Kirby) because what would these films be without family?  Just as mindlessly fun as the recent films in the series, what let this one down for me is the constant trash talk between The Rock and Statham.  It's cute for a while but over two hours of this pissing contest is just tiresome.  There's also an extended cameo from Kevin Hart who I can't stand.  The action scenes are totally ridiculous - Elba's transformer like motorbike is a personal fav - but they're all fun and unique.  The final act showdown set in Samoa is also a nice change of location.  This does feel like a script where they changed the names of the two main characters to make it fit into the Fast and Furious universe just for the name recognition, but this film delivered exactly what I expected from it, which I guess is both a positive and a negative.  6.5/10

Threads

dir. Mick Jackson/1984/1h57m 

Made for BBC TV on a tiny budget, Threads is a docu-drama set in the Northern English city of Sheffield during the lead up to and fallout of a nuclear war.  With its use of actual BBC documentary narrator Paul Vaughn, stock footage and text on screen detailing the time line of events this could be mistaken as real.  The drama part of the docu-drama comes from following young woman Ruth (Karen Meagher) who has just become pregnant with her boyfriend and is just about to start her life.  In the background on news reports and newspapers tensions are rising between the US and Russia.  This lead up to the bombs dropping is incredibly well executed, the tension slowly being cranked up as these reports come to the foreground slowly but surely.  It begins to invade the normal everyday lives of the people of Sheffield.  The second half of the film details the bombings and the breakdown of society in the aftermath and it is the most grim, brutal, depressing, hopeless, scary, and sadly realistic (judging by the extensive list of doctors and professors in the special thanks section of the credits) depiction of the apocalypse I've ever seen.  I nearly stopped watching at a couple of points because it's all just too much.  That says nothing of the ending, a horrific series of events set over a decade after the end of the world which snaps into a freezeframe just as a character is about to scream and then the end credits roll in total silence.  This is one of the best films I've ever seen and I urge you all to watch it, it's on the BBC iPlayer if you're in the UK or have a VPN.  10/10 Lime's Film of the Week! 

The Devil in a Convent

dir. Georges Méliès/1899/3m 

Another short from Georges Méliès sees him continue his fascination with demons and religion.  Here he plays a tricksy devil who appears in a convent, disguises himself as a priest and torments the nuns there before being banished back to hell.  As well as his continued perfection of his special effects techniques what really stands out in his films are the gorgeously detailed sets that look like they're taken straight off of the stage.  His films are also becoming longer and more intricate, three minutes was considered long for a film at the time, and his 12 minute Trip to the Moon a few years later was initially mocked for being too long to keep people's attention.  A wonderful slice of magic from the dawn of the artform.  8/10

Monsters University

dir. Dan Scanlon/2013/1h44m 

This totally unnecessary prequel tells the story of how Mike (Billy Crystal) and Sully (John Goodman) met at college, starting out as adversaries before having to work together to help their fraternity win the annual scare games and keep their place in school.  Mostly a collection of tropes, cliches and stereotypes from every college film since Animal House this still does have some good jokes scattered throughout and, as usual, the animation is excellent.  Crystal can get grating at times but Goodman is always a pleasure to listen to, and there's a good supporting turn from Helen Mirren as the dean of the college.  In my opinion Monsters Inc is one of Pixar's best films with a perfect ending, so I'm glad they didn't try to do a sequel (and I hope they don't in the future), but that stuck them with doing a prequel, and the characters aren't really that different at the start of the film than at the end, so there's not even any growth or development.  It's just more time to spend with them, which isn't a bad thing, but it's time spent doing nothing.  5.5/10

[djw180 7,104]

@LimeGreenLegend I remember watching some of Threads when at school, maybe a year or so after it was released, as part of an English project on nuclear weapons. I didn't live in Sheffield then, which I seem to recall making it seem more distant and as teenagers we kind of dismissed it with a "this can't happen to us" type of attitude. I do intend watching it at some point, I noticed it on iplayer, probably not this weekend.

[djw180 7,104]

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