I remember watching that yeaaaars ago (like, 30?). I remembered it as Delta Force which led to confusion when I saw some of that.
To be honest, all I really remember are the vehicles.
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Finally got around to watching The Bullet Vanishes, which has been in my queue for a while; I think it is far far better than its IMDB rating of 6.6. The movie, set in a Chinese factory town in the 1930s, is very much a classic film noir, with all the standard elements: corrupt cops, damaged characters, snide dialogue, moody lighting and odd camera angles. The main detective is a little derivative of Sherlock Holmes, but more Basil Rathbone than either Brett or Cumberbach. Even though I don’t speak a syllable of Chinese, the grindy Mandarin (which always reminds me of Flemish) somehow enhanced the whole atmosphere.
Here’s the trailer:
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Red Road - because who doesn’t like depressing British films starring random people from Game of Thrones?
I picked this up because I’d heard good things about American Honey and I thought I’d check out what else the director had done before. Now that I look it up I remember that I’ve seen Fish Tank previously. That one was fun, too.
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First one. By Andrea Arnold.
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OK.
Or maybe not.
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Yeah even at an age where I was the target demographic I couldn’t take more than 15 minutes of that movie. I should try watching it again sometime and revel in the awfulness of it.
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The Rifftrax version is free on amazon prime right now. That’s the ONLY reason why we watched it. What a stinker!
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Aww, it had Persis Khambesis in it!
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One memorable day when I was in junior high school - about 1986 - the students were all led into the auditorium for a surprise assembly. Which turned out to be a 16mm print of Megaforce for us to watch. It was a trip to watch it on the big screen with a few hundred teens. We already considered a kooky throwback even then.
True, but it made me want to watch ST:TMP instead. For better or worse, I think I sexually imprinted upon Ilia/VGER.
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A doctor gave me some quinine and an inoculation to combat my persis khambesis.
Surely you’re thinking of the 1980 sensation Zenyatta Mondatta?
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I find it weird that a lot of my film-buff friends aren’t familiar with this one:
“The Wife” 1995, Tom Noonan, Julie Haggerty, Wallace Shawn, Karen Young. Somewhere between comedy and tragedy, as four people get drunk over dinner, ostensibly as some kind of new-age therapy session between a mis-matched husband and wife.
Kind of an amazing film, incredible (and believable) performances, interesting set-ups and shots, a comedy that’s almost not funny because it’s so emotionally raw.
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I had never heard of it before. It sounds interesting, and the synopsis in the abstract reminds me a lot of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, which has been my cinematic benchmark for dysfunctional marriage.
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Could the ending be reasonably described as “dissolves into mystical bullshit”?
Because that’s exactly the sort of pseudo-SF that I can’t stand.
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Does the plot really matter? Several years ago I was lucky enough to see Rifftrax live when they did the original House On Haunted Hill. It was tremendous fun but they said they felt slightly guilty about riffing on a film they genuinely liked. And even though I’d already seen it more than a dozen times it was hard not to get into it and then be taken slightly out by the jokes.
All of us in the audience were also laughing so hard I also wonder how many jokes we missed. Still it was worth it just to sit next to the couple who came wearing Gizmonic Institute jumpsuits.
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Everybody Wants Some!! I’m not the biggest Linklater fan (Boyhood left me cold), but this was a lot more fun than I expected. Wafer-thin, but amusing. Wait…he did the adaptation of A Scanner Darkly and the Before trilogy, didn’t he? Maybe it’s just Boyhood I didn’t like.
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Spielberg is a Hollywood guy trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator though. You can’t operate with much subtlety when you have to recoup masdive investments on films like his, I think.
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BTW: I’d heartily recommend Armistead Maupin’s book Maybe the Moon.
It’s a thinly disguised, fictionalised account of the life of Tamara De Treaux, the woman who wore the ET costume.
The Spielberg-expy in the book does not come off at all well. Complete arsehole.
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“She was played one of the three creatures in John Newland’s horror TV movie Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (1973 film).”
Wicked! She scared the shit out of me when I was a kid.
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