Bad Films I watched this weekend
Discussion
Halb said:
Jaroon said:
I absolutely loved Dredd, way more than I should have, probably. My Grandad used to post me a copy of 2000 AD every week for many years, I know the charaters well and think this was a great stab at Dredd, Mega City One, Mega Blocks etc. Even loved the sound track but hey I'm quite aware my taste could often be described as "quirky".
Yeah Dredd was excellent, best comic book film for a while.Asterix said:
Halb said:
Jaroon said:
I absolutely loved Dredd, way more than I should have, probably. My Grandad used to post me a copy of 2000 AD every week for many years, I know the charaters well and think this was a great stab at Dredd, Mega City One, Mega Blocks etc. Even loved the sound track but hey I'm quite aware my taste could often be described as "quirky".
Yeah Dredd was excellent, best comic book film for a while.
bennyboydurham said:
Million Ways To Die In The West. Not rubbish but if you enjoy Ted and Family Guy and expected a Seth Mcfarlane flick to deliver more of the same, you'll be somewhat disappointed. Although I did sit through it thinking of the unspeakable things I'd like to do to Charlize Theron.
Watched this on Friday. Must admit I enjoyed it, lots of hilarious bits, did drag on in places but overall nowhere near as bad as the reviews suggest. I'd probably give it 7/10, not quite as funny as Ted, still some genius moments tho (I'm thinking the sheep suffering from retardation and Seth's mate clarifying his virginity). toon10 said:
Don't know if it's been mentioned on this thread but Only God Forgives is possibly the worst movie I've sat through in many a year. Ryan "I'm a bit moody and don't like dialog" Gosling. Self indulgent art house, dreamy Karaoke scenes, virtually no dialog, unbelievable characters who are all so unpleasant you don't care about them. The list of how cruddy this film is goes on and on. Just awful.
Have you seen the film Drive, and if so did you like it? I think I might like Only God Forgives because I like Drive.
Mercury00 said:
toon10 said:
Don't know if it's been mentioned on this thread but Only God Forgives is possibly the worst movie I've sat through in many a year. Ryan "I'm a bit moody and don't like dialog" Gosling. Self indulgent art house, dreamy Karaoke scenes, virtually no dialog, unbelievable characters who are all so unpleasant you don't care about them. The list of how cruddy this film is goes on and on. Just awful.
Have you seen the film Drive, and if so did you like it? I think I might like Only God Forgives because I like Drive.Mercury00 said:
Have you seen the film Drive, and if so did you like it? I think I might like Only God Forgives because I like Drive.
I really enjoyed drive and I know there's a lot of people who didn't. It is slow but full of atmosphere, it has a good soundtrack and it builds quite nicely. At least with Drive the story makes sense, there's some dialog and it flows quite nicely. Only God Forgives tries to do a similar thing but fails on most levels. Actually, I'm doing it a bit of an injustice, there are some beutifully shot scenes, not grand landscape cinematography but internal shots with intersting lighting, etc. Like I say it's a bit art house so those into photography might take something from it.
I'd be interested to see what your thoughts are if you do watch it though.
toon10 said:
Mercury00 said:
Have you seen the film Drive, and if so did you like it? I think I might like Only God Forgives because I like Drive.
I really enjoyed drive and I know there's a lot of people who didn't. It is slow but full of atmosphere, it has a good soundtrack and it builds quite nicely. At least with Drive the story makes sense, there's some dialog and it flows quite nicely. Only God Forgives tries to do a similar thing but fails on most levels. Actually, I'm doing it a bit of an injustice, there are some beutifully shot scenes, not grand landscape cinematography but internal shots with intersting lighting, etc. Like I say it's a bit art house so those into photography might take something from it.
I'd be interested to see what your thoughts are if you do watch it though.
hapless said:
I watched this last night. First of all, I think a lot of people haven't liked it because they were expecting something that this film really really isn't. There are a lot of people who loved the retro cool of Drive, and thought that another Refn / Gosling film would be of that ilk. These are people who probably haven't seen Valhalla Rising, which Refn did before - and which gives fair warning that he is perfectly capable of making a film in which people stand around silently for ages and ages, and nothing happens other than they look at each other significantly.
Only God Forgives felt like a genetic splice between a David Lynch film and a Takeshi Kitano film. The characters don't act anything like real people would act. The film isn't even set in anything like our actual reality. It pretends it is, but it isn't. People spend too long gazing silently and the camera stares at them for uncomfortably long periods. There is hardly any dialogue. It is lit and filmed in massive expressionist swathes of bright colour, like Dario Argento made a film in 1979 about a man who doesn't talk much, to Thai prostitutes.
It's pointless talking about the plot because that's just a puff of cloud to hang the visuals on. But. A man murders a prostitute and is in revenge murdered by her father, encouraged by a vicious senior policeman. The dead man's brother fails to take revenge and as such their mother feels obliged to exact retribution.
Lots of what you see in the film could be either events happening, dream sequences, imagined realities from a character's perspective, foreshadowing of later events, or pretty much anything. I'm not sure how much of what I watched was actually happening, and I don't know how the film actually ended. Or why it might have ended in the way it appeared to show. It is all very much open to interpretation. If this sounds like a film that would annoy or frustrate you, then you're probably right, and probably in the same boat as the tons of reviewers who panned it. I don't think it's anything like the film people thought it would be.
There is some violence in it, which is brutal but not very graphic - and it feels more brutal than it looks because it mostly comes by surprise. In that respect it's a lot like the yakuza films Kitano makes, where even someone standing still with a blank face can be terrifying because you have no warning of what will happen or when, but you know it's definitely coming.
Kristin Scott Thomas is astonishing in this film, and Ryan Gosling could be anybody, frankly. His performance is made of nothing so it's hard to tell if he does it well. Similarly, the mad policeman is a blank-faced figure who marches Terminator-like through scene after scene chopping bits off people. I can't tell if he's a good actor either. It all looks interesting and exciting and brilliant and I think I was more fascinated and intrigued than I was actually enjoying it. There are occasional scenes where it looks and feels almost like a normal film - where it's the same colour as reality is, and people are having a conversation or something (even if Refn offers us many of those scenes in silence, with the dialogue muted) - and those scenes feel like a kind of relief, where you feel like you can relax from trying to discern what the film is doing or showing you, and instead just watch what happens.
I'm very glad I watched it and it was thought-provoking and interesting. I haven't decided if I actually enjoyed watching it, but I can see why "normal" audiences would hate it and think they had been tricked into watching an art film. Because it is an art film, I suppose.
Anyway, I think it's terrific at what it sets out to do, but I doubt many people will want to watch the film that it sets out to be. It's really hard to rate it but I reckon I'd score it at 7.5 because it is clearly excellent even if I'm still not sure what it's excellent at.
Only God Forgives felt like a genetic splice between a David Lynch film and a Takeshi Kitano film. The characters don't act anything like real people would act. The film isn't even set in anything like our actual reality. It pretends it is, but it isn't. People spend too long gazing silently and the camera stares at them for uncomfortably long periods. There is hardly any dialogue. It is lit and filmed in massive expressionist swathes of bright colour, like Dario Argento made a film in 1979 about a man who doesn't talk much, to Thai prostitutes.
It's pointless talking about the plot because that's just a puff of cloud to hang the visuals on. But. A man murders a prostitute and is in revenge murdered by her father, encouraged by a vicious senior policeman. The dead man's brother fails to take revenge and as such their mother feels obliged to exact retribution.
Lots of what you see in the film could be either events happening, dream sequences, imagined realities from a character's perspective, foreshadowing of later events, or pretty much anything. I'm not sure how much of what I watched was actually happening, and I don't know how the film actually ended. Or why it might have ended in the way it appeared to show. It is all very much open to interpretation. If this sounds like a film that would annoy or frustrate you, then you're probably right, and probably in the same boat as the tons of reviewers who panned it. I don't think it's anything like the film people thought it would be.
There is some violence in it, which is brutal but not very graphic - and it feels more brutal than it looks because it mostly comes by surprise. In that respect it's a lot like the yakuza films Kitano makes, where even someone standing still with a blank face can be terrifying because you have no warning of what will happen or when, but you know it's definitely coming.
Kristin Scott Thomas is astonishing in this film, and Ryan Gosling could be anybody, frankly. His performance is made of nothing so it's hard to tell if he does it well. Similarly, the mad policeman is a blank-faced figure who marches Terminator-like through scene after scene chopping bits off people. I can't tell if he's a good actor either. It all looks interesting and exciting and brilliant and I think I was more fascinated and intrigued than I was actually enjoying it. There are occasional scenes where it looks and feels almost like a normal film - where it's the same colour as reality is, and people are having a conversation or something (even if Refn offers us many of those scenes in silence, with the dialogue muted) - and those scenes feel like a kind of relief, where you feel like you can relax from trying to discern what the film is doing or showing you, and instead just watch what happens.
I'm very glad I watched it and it was thought-provoking and interesting. I haven't decided if I actually enjoyed watching it, but I can see why "normal" audiences would hate it and think they had been tricked into watching an art film. Because it is an art film, I suppose.
Anyway, I think it's terrific at what it sets out to do, but I doubt many people will want to watch the film that it sets out to be. It's really hard to rate it but I reckon I'd score it at 7.5 because it is clearly excellent even if I'm still not sure what it's excellent at.
Mercury00 said:
Have you seen the film Drive, and if so did you like it? I think I might like Only God Forgives because I like Drive.
I think Drive is probably my favourite film, yet Only God Forgives definitely ranks in the top 5 time-wasters I've had the misfortune of perservering through.Watched Paranoia recently, had high hopes with Ford and Oldman in it but that was absolutely dire.
Robocop (2014 remake)
I thought it was s
t to be perfectly honest. And not just because I LOVED the original as a kid, but just because this one left me with no connection to Murphy, i couldn't like the guy for some reason. His suit looked crap, the original Robocop looked bad ass and not to be messed with, this new one looked like he just had shiny riot gear on.
He looked stupid all black and tactical. And the lack of an actual decent Bad Guy.
His gun was too small and not bad ass enough ('87 Murphy's was a big ass desert eagle type shooter that looked fitting for a bad ass robot to use)
I could go on, but I've already had enough of listing my flaws with it.
It could have been so much better in this era of awesome cgi/costume designers etc etc. And watched it through to the end in the hope that it would get better.
The only thing they did get right was keeping the theme tune!
2/10 from me, and that's only for the theme tune!
I thought it was s
t to be perfectly honest. And not just because I LOVED the original as a kid, but just because this one left me with no connection to Murphy, i couldn't like the guy for some reason. His suit looked crap, the original Robocop looked bad ass and not to be messed with, this new one looked like he just had shiny riot gear on.He looked stupid all black and tactical. And the lack of an actual decent Bad Guy.
His gun was too small and not bad ass enough ('87 Murphy's was a big ass desert eagle type shooter that looked fitting for a bad ass robot to use)
I could go on, but I've already had enough of listing my flaws with it.
It could have been so much better in this era of awesome cgi/costume designers etc etc. And watched it through to the end in the hope that it would get better.
The only thing they did get right was keeping the theme tune!
2/10 from me, and that's only for the theme tune!
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