IdleRich

IdleRich
For once a film that I can pretty much unreservedly recommend. Spanish thing called Platform. Interesting idea in which loads of people live in a vertical prison, each cell containing two prisoners with some above and some below. Once a day a platform containing a load of food is lowered from the top to the bottom, stopping for two minutes on each floor allowing the people there to eat, and then carrying on to the bottom... great if you're near the top, but if you're near the bottom then all the food is gone by the time the platform reaches you so you have to either starve or eat your cell-mate. Every thirty days they shake up the order and you get put on a new floor. And that's it in a way - and I said pretty much recommend cos, yeah, the allegory is kinda heavy handed, the society of people above (sometimes literally) pissing and shitting on those below - but somehow it stays tense and interesting pretty much to the end. Partly I guess cos of the way it makes you realise how high the stakes are from the start, injecting a feeling of genuine tension to every bloody moment. And yeah it is bloody, it's incredibly violent, gory, nasty whatever... so not for the faint-hearted I supposed, but I pretty much recommend it to you lot.

 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Also, The Black Tower... I think this was first recommended to me on dissensus many years back - now with a neat synchronicity it's on YouTube so I can order everyone to watch it. Well, everyone who can spare twenty minutes to watch a genuinely creepy, surreal and yet funny art film set in 80s east London. When I get paid I will buy the boxset thing from his website... seems only fair.

 
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kevinoak

Active member
Off the top of my head, I'll go with...

a. The Bourne Identity

b. The Greatest Store In The World

c. Chicken Run

d. X-Men

e. The Incredibles

f. Love Actually

g. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkeban

I'm running out of steaming service now so I'll stop there
 
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craner

Beast of Burden
I watched the original Stargate last night. In 1996, one of my tutors was Griselda Pollock, and she used to go on about how much she loved this film, which I always found odd, as I just thought it was some hokey Hollywood CGI junk (not that I had seen it). It was on telly last night, and just in memory of Griselda I gave it a go, and it was like watching Groupname for Grapejuice.
 
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IdleRich

IdleRich
We watched the Italian film Perfect Strangers the other day. Kinda unbelievable film in that it's about a load of very middle-class dinner party guests who all have massive dirty secrets and yet agree to play a game where they all leave their phones out in the open and answer any phone calls on speaker phone in front of everyone. Exactly as you wouldn't do if you were almost certain to get a phone call that could ruin your life if anyone heard it. Anyway, apart from that credulity stretching premise it's very well done, good performances from everyone and good dialogue that keeps it fizzing along. Apparently it has the distinction of being the film that has been re-made into the most different languages for some reason (about 18 different ones I think).
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Off the top of my head, I'll go with...

a. The Bourne Identity

b. The Greatest Store In The World

c. Chicken Run

d. X-Men

e. The Incredibles

f. Love Actually

g. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkeban

I'm running out of steaming service now so I'll stop there

Thing is, if Kevinoak is a spam bot, 'The Greatest Store in the World' is a bizarre pick, isn't it?

Is it put in there to convince you he's real, do you think?

(No offence Kevinoak, I love you.)
 

entertainment

Well-known member
I was stoned the other day when I read that Kevinoak post and I started thinking that he was somekind of psyop marketing bot and that the post was filled with subliminal messaging.

I tried to decode it and came up with all sorts of possible hidden signalling, stimuli nudging us towards buying Incredible Chicken, telling us what we Actually Love and that shopping for Identity is The Greatest Store In The World, stuff like that.

It started getting deeper and more abstract, can't remember exactly what but there were some shocking revelations.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Serial Experiments Lain? I dunno what it is.
Not really big news to anyone but Get Carter was on telly here just now and it reminded me what an incredibly nasty, cold and powerful bit of sleaze it is. I dunno how many times I've seen it but every time there is a horrible bit that catches me by surprise. SPOILERS I remembered him deliberately OD-ing that girl and killing her so I was ready for that... but totally forgot about his car going in the river with the other girl in the boot.
Fuck it's dark, but the only thing for me is the ending is a little too neat. I think it would in a sense be more interesting to think what happens to this brutal psychopath now he's got his revenge, killed everyone and burned his bridges.... where does he go? How does he even live? Just getting gunned down by an anonymous hitman is a bit too much of a convenient full stop on the film. Prevented there being a shitty sequel at least I guess.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
Serial Experiments Lain? I dunno what it is.
Not really big news to anyone but Get Carter was on telly here just now and it reminded me what an incredibly nasty, cold and powerful bit of sleaze it is. I dunno how many times I've seen it but every time there is a horrible bit that catches me by surprise. SPOILERS I remembered him deliberately OD-ing that girl and killing her so I was ready for that... but totally forgot about his car going in the river with the other girl in the boot.
Fuck it's dark, but the only thing for me is the ending is a little too neat. I think it would in a sense be more interesting to think what happens to this brutal psychopath now he's got his revenge, killed everyone and burned his bridges.... where does he go? How does he even live? Just getting gunned down by an anonymous hitman is a bit too much of a convenient full stop on the film. Prevented there being a shitty sequel at least I guess.

I used to think it was like a Spaghetti Western set in the 1970s North with Ford Cortinas and multi-storey car parks rather than horses and saloons, but that was way off base. It’s not even a neo-noir, or even exploitation; it’s in that grim, queasy twilight zone occupied by things like Performance and Witchfinder General, a specifically British form of malaise and brutalism.
 

catalog

Well-known member
very odd film. good car park shots, and i like the end cos of how its all silent. the blaxploitation remake was also pretty good. i think i've read the book even, years ago. similar vibe to frenzy by hitch i think. i think witchfinder general is way way better, cos its so fucking weird.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Agreed (with Craner). I'm trying to think what I'd put it with. It might be an attempted neo-noir of sorts but that's not what it ended up being. It's not really my strong suit but I'm sure there are some other nasty Brit 70s films.... I think it's the something about the cold that makes them nastier. Just watching them in their miniskirts with hair blowing in that cold Tyneside wind makes me shiver in itself.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I much prefer it to Witchfinder but I'd like to watch that again, I haven't seen it in ages. Frenzy is a good call I think, a lot of people I know who like Hitchcock kinda see that as a weak point in his back catalogue but - regardless of whether or not that's true - I think that the very things they have an issue with as a Hitchcock film are what make it more like GC.
 

catalog

Well-known member
witchfinder is more peculiar, cos of the (at times) very poor acting, but it's really the ending. its quality. also that opening sequence of is amazing - you know its not gonna be a normal one.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I wish someone could tell me what's supposed to be good about The Blood On Satan's Claw.... but that's another story.
 
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