zabadak 7 hours ago | | M3GAN (2022) | ReviewThis Is Local London review :read:
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zabadak 7 hours ago | | Puss In Boots: The Last Wish (2022) | ReviewWhyNow review :read:
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zabadak 8 hours ago | | Knock At The Cabin (2023) | WhyNow review :read:
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zabadak 8 hours ago | | Pamela: A Love Story (2023) | ReviewWhyNow review :read:
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zabadak 4th Feb 2023 | | Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody (2022) | British Cinematographer article about capture crowd technology :read:
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neil86 4th Feb 2023 | | Youngblood (1978) | Movie soundtrack here
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zabadak 2nd Feb 2023 | | The Whale (2022) | ReviewIndependent review :read:
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zabadak 2nd Feb 2023 | | Puss In Boots: The Last Wish (2022) | ReviewIndependent review :read:
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alexlincs 2nd Feb 2023 | | Ankabut-e Moqaddas (2022) | I will add title screen next week
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zabadak 28th Jan 2023 | | Plane (2023) | ReviewIndependent review (with trailer) :read:
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zabadak 28th Jan 2023 | | Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022) | ReviewIndependent review :read:
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zabadak 25th Jan 2023 | | Empire Of Light (2022) | Trailer :happy:
[YouTube Video]
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zabadak 25th Jan 2023 | | Empire Of Light (2022) | ReviewCity AM review :read:
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zabadak 25th Jan 2023 | | The Ghost Of Sierra De Cobre (1964) | Very beautifully filmed in black and white but a mess overall, probably due to its gestation as a TV pilot, stretched to film length when the proposed series fell through. Frustrating as there is obvious potential there. Maybe due a remake, as it is not well-known? :happy:
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alexlincs 24th Jan 2023 | | Somewhere In Dreamland (1936) | Massive upgrade to title screen from new streaming version
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alexlincs 23rd Jan 2023 | | Babylon (2022) | Rated 7/10This review will be uploaded to Imdb and contains spoilers
Babylon (obvious nod to scandal book Hollywood Babylon) is a very (post)modern take on old Hollywood. Lavished with profanity, many gross-out scenes and occasional moments of beauty. It's an uneven mix of style over substance. This film has all the elements and many great bits, but as a whole it is coherent, but bloated and not as clever as it should be.
Diego Calva play Manuel Torres, a young Spanish man who seems to be a sort of fixer for rich people, from this slow start he becomes a runner on Hollywood films after befriending a drunken Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt) at a party. At the party he meets Nellie LaRoy (Margot Robbie) a young woman from the sticks with big ambition to become a star.
The film is about Hollywood actors not being able to make the transition from Silent film to the Talkies which was a real problem at the time. There's a Pygmallion inspired plot with Nellie LaRoy being taught how to speak proper. This subplot would be more tragic if it wasn't played for laughs. Jack Conrad being Hollywood's hot property and a raging alcoholic; a sort of hybrid of Rudolph Valentino, Douglas Fairbanks and echoing Charlie Chaplin (who famously wasn't as successful in Talkies). It's nice to see Brad Pitt given a chance to test his acting chops with something meaty. Sadly the character is underwritten and always feels a bit one-dimensional, he has a divorce and a marriage within 30 minutes of screen time. When the emotional gut punch arrives, we could spot it a mile off.
Margot Robbie as Nellie LaRoy is one of the multidimensional characters along with Diego Calva as Manny Torres. She's sort of Mildred June, Greta Garbo, Theda Bara and of course Louise Brooks - all of which get referenced. More interestingly I was reminded of recent starlets like Courtney Love and Lindsay Lohan. She's a woman who is possibly a victim of her own actions as well as her upbringing and ultimately we learn she never learns. Diego Calva is Oscar worthy for sure with a surprisingly understated performance amongst many which are deliberately larger than life. A man who fixes other people's mistakes and manages to get recognised for doing it, but ultimately gets dragged down by Nellie.
The film is sort of a patchwork quilt of old and new. As mentioned the deliberately profanity laden script, pop culture references were most characters could be from any era of Hollywood. One highlight was Manny being chased through a series of tunnels in LA's A-hole which was blatantly a reference to Dante's Inferno and possibly the film Irreversible. The real star of the show is the cinematography (a gorgeous palate of browns, reds and burnt oranges) and jazz soundtrack. Even the soundtrack had a modern twist featuring on one track which I suspect used an electronic drum beat. There's also been a recent trend of shock elements in drama and this film has it in spades - a man getting sprayed with elephant dung immediately followed by the last days of Rome party scene: there's a dwarf on a phallic shaped pogo stick spraying white foam into the crowd, a reference to Fatty Arbuckle and a young girl, champagne bottle up the Aris' and later on we have projectile vomiting and some gory scenes. Much like how non-horror films took elements of Slasher films and put them in thrillers we have scenes that wouldn't be out of place in a gross out teen comedy or even a porn film in a mainstream big budget release and I'm not a prude, but you need a strong stomach to get through this one.
I'm a huge fan of films that are "the American dream gone wrong" and I recalled films like Sunset Blvd. and L.A. Confidential both better films. Another meta reference was Manny watching a film in the 1950s, immediately reminding the viewer of Cinema Paradiso (a much better film) and that summed it up. While the film is clever in places and knowing there's not much heart and soul to it. While it is more fun than Silent-era homage "The Artist" it never rises above feeling like its beating the audience over the head with a canapé tray to get the message across rather than being subtle. Quite what the message is supposed to be is open to interpretation: Hollywood is a mean place that will steal your soul, but look at the escapism and artistry on offer.
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SvendHenrik00 22nd Jan 2023 | | Reno-Brødrene (1958) | Danish Movie Program Booklets from 1958 [from the Premiere in Denmark] & 1966 [from the Re-Premiere in Denmark] added.
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zabadak 22nd Jan 2023 | | M3GAN (2022) | ReviewWhyNow review :read:
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zabadak 22nd Jan 2023 | | Tár (2022) | ReviewWhyNow review :read:
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zabadak 22nd Jan 2023 | | The Fabelmans (2022) | ReviewIndependent review :read:
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zabadak 22nd Jan 2023 | | The Banshees Of Inisherin (2022) | ReviewIndependent review :read:
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zabadak 22nd Jan 2023 | | Babylon (2022) | WhyNow review :read:
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zabadak 16th Jan 2023 | | The Tingler (1959) | Yeah, not bad. Terrible acting and effects but the idea was amusing! :happy:
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SvendHenrik00 15th Jan 2023 | | Barken Margrethe Af Danmark (1934) | Movie Posters, Movie Program Booklets, Movie Exhibition Photos plus Press Photo from the Movie Premiere at the "KINO" Cinema in Odense on 20 September 1934 added.
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Dr Doom SUBS 13th Jan 2023 | | Der Letzte Ritt Nach Santa Cruz (1964) | Ace theme song
[YouTube Video]
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zabadak 13th Jan 2023 | | Tár (2022) | ReviewGuardian review :read:
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zabadak 8th Jan 2023 | | Till (2022) | ReviewWhyNow review :read:
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Magic Marmalade 8th Jan 2023 | | Rumble Fish (1983) | Rated 7/10Hyper stylised, stark, black and white fever dream.
One I have gone through life thinking I'd seen but turns out, I hadn't!
This is a very odd film.
Not massively long, or epic really, which is surprising, given that this is essentially an art-house movie by Francis Ford Coppola, rather a more intimate tale centred around Matt Dillon's "Rusty James" character, a gang leader wannabe, living mainly off the reputation of his strange, soft spoken and sensitive (flaky) older brother's reputation as some kind of local legend: "The Motorcycle Boy" (Rourke), but who has long since dropped out of this gang world, and gone awol, as has Rusty James' dad (Hopper) - a ten-bob barfly, and local drunkard "philosopher" type.
Rusty's trying to live up to the hype, of a life his brother left behind, and both his brother and father seem to have a perspective on life he can't understand.
What's weird about this movie is that it has a note of the woozy unsettling tone that is induced in the viewer by Apocalypse Now, through the stark contrasting black and white giving the visuals (accompanied by the shot set up) a hyper natural emphasis... and punctuated by the odd moment of colour in the fish...
(You have to see this to understand it, but it amounts to a device to say there's a world we an see, but those characters cannot, even if it's right before their eyes - Rourke's character even says: "I wish I could see the Colours" while they're right before the audience's eyes.)
In addition to this. the assembled cast of brilliant accomplished actors, give almost caricature performances, - over emphasised, and almost hammy, like Coppola asked them deliberately to act badly, or slightly worse than we all know they can... and bizarrely, the most subdued performances comes from Nicholas Cage, and a cameo from Tom Waits!.
So to begin with, I just wasn't buying into it, as it felt like a monochrome, music-less West-Side Story affair, done by a local am-dram society, but as these are great actors, it feels almost like they're taking the piss out of the audience... But by degrees, I found the story more engaging, and was drawing me in, so by the end, it turns out to be not such a bad film after all... even a good one.
For this reason my rating began from a low point of about a 3, or 4,and gradually crept up as the film went on, landing finally on a 7. Had, perhaps, I'd known what this was going in, I might have stared a bit higher to begin with, or maybe if this was a bit better made, it might have a higher overall score.
So in terms of ratings, this film feels like a 6 or 7 out of 10 movie, with an 8, 9, or even a 10 out of 10 movie trapped inside it, trying to get out. I t might possibly be one of those that grows on you over time, but first viewing leaves you only barely whelmed.
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zabadak 7th Jan 2023 | | Jules Et Jim (1962) | New trailer :happy:
[YouTube Video]
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zabadak 7th Jan 2023 | | Avatar: The Way Of Water (2022) | ReviewThis Is Local London review :read:
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