nochexxx

harco pronting
The unofficial film about Brexit. It took a bit to “get into it”, the sound design specifically, which seemed to place it from a much older period. Not everyone’s cup of tea, but it has a sense of unease and tension in the mundane that’s exceptionally rare.

interesting take, i hadn't thought about it on those terms.

i felt right at home with the production values, i loved seeing something as contemporary as a Macbook fed through the hand-cranked Bolex.
 

catalog

Well-known member
I really wanted to like it but was a bit disappointed. Might watch again. I think seeing it at cinema would've been good. Definitely unique style and the glitchy editing was good. And I liked the subplot with the romance. Maybe was expecting too much tho.

Good that a film like this can still get made and become relatively well known.

I sort of get what you mean about brexit, if you mean the main guy is a leave voter and the gentrifying family is remain? Or do you mean something else?
 

yyaldrin

in je ogen waait de wind
i saw john akomfrah's "handsworth songs" about the 1985 birmingham and london riots. it is a collage like video putting together news footage, interviews with local communities and photo's. it all looked very grainy, haunted a bit. there's this beautiful shot in the beginning where a man is trying to run across a street that is full with police, trying to dodge them like a rugby player, trying to reach the end of the street, and getting really far, but in the end failing cos it's sheer impossible to run through so many police officers. very good soundtrack as well. some amazing dub bits. i wish i had written this before because it was free to stream until monday.

buuuuuuuuuut, another film that is still free to stream is franco rosso's babylon. which i haven't seen myself yet but is supposed to be good as well. for those interested: https://www.criterionchannel.com/black-lives/season:1/videos/babylon-texted

edit: you can see handsworth songs on youtube:
 
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IdleRich

IdleRich
Funnily enough on that soundtrack radio show I did the other day I put a bit from Babylon. I didn't know it was getting this big re-issue so there must have been something in the air. I just love that scene when they go to the Jah Shaka rave and it cuts between that and the Aswad guy on the train staring at all the white people who hate him. The sirens on that scene are insane. I don't think you can get that sound on any kinda official release (correct me if I'm wrong) so I (admit I) just nicked it from youtube for the radio show.
 

WashYourHands

Cat Malogen
I really wanted to like it but was a bit disappointed. Might watch again. I think seeing it at cinema would've been good. Definitely unique style and the glitchy editing was good. And I liked the subplot with the romance. Maybe was expecting too much tho.

Good that a film like this can still get made and become relatively well known.

I sort of get what you mean about brexit, if you mean the main guy is a leave voter and the gentrifying family is remain? Or do you mean something else?

Yeah without doubt it’s a lull ride and mates have articulated exactly the same note of disappointment, it took a second watch for its tension to really break through the monotony.

Brexit as in disenfranchisement, immigration as a white on white phenomenon in this case, the drip drip of accumulating poverty, loss of industry, infrastructure and identity too I suppose. Loss of inheritance, ie the changing livelihoods of brothers. The Cornish angle was less overt than, say, red wall land or insert atypically Brexity locales, but the class structures and monopolies of choice are fully realised. I fell in love with the sound design. Weird thing to say about a film. It throws you, disturbingly so at times, mixed with a vivid black and white sheen. The scapes or doors and windows opening, the squeaky squelch sound of fenders (had to google that term) on the boats in harbour.

Overall, I‘m just grateful films like this are even being made in Britain today. A mate would say stfu you pretentious twat (about me!), but so it goes. It seems like the British film world is stuck between the twee bollocks of so much inane wank from recent memory and Ken Loach (and I love Ken), where there aren’t the body of experimental works of a figure like Jarman too often. Of course there are exceptions but they increasingly seem to prove the rule. Apologies for the waffle, day off, no kids here so daddy is stoned to the gills for once.
 

catalog

Well-known member
Well I'll maybe give it another go sometime. Totally agree on the sound design, and I like the regular refrain of the main actors voice and cadence, but i just kinda drifted. I think the main story was a bit obvious maybe? Like you see it coming a mile off, then it's like 'oh, that's it', without it ever becoming intriguing enough. But totally agree that it's good that stuff like this is getting made and getting an audience
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I've been using this period of being alone for a bit to look through all the hundreds of links I've saved in my favourites intending to watch/listen/read etc but never quite got round to. Yesterday I came across a film called A Simple Favour - I had no idea whatsoever what it was, why it was there, who was in it etc The only thing I could say was that presumably at some point someone had recommended it or something I'd read had intrigued me in some way at some point - though not quite enough to actually watch it.
Anyway I had nowt better to do so I dived in blind and... well still none the wiser as to what it was doing there, but I enjoyed it well enough I guess. A queasy mix of black comedy and one of those kinda twisty turny murder type stories where each new reveal changes your opinion of everyone involved. Queasy, not cos those things don't go together, but rather because it felt as though they seemed to pick funny when a bit more plot might have worked and vice versa. Ultimately the actual final plot just didn't quite add up for me and it wasn't as sharp and neat as it wanted - in fact needed - to be to really pack the intended punch.
Everything I've said sounds negative and that's not really fair though. It kept me watching and enjoying all the way through, I think maybe cos strong performances from the three leads, especially the women (I think that guy is just creepy by nature) made it work, along with a general kinda exuberance that permeated the film all the way through and which elevated scenes and plotlines which could have felt cliched to instead having a kind of knockabout charm.
Not essential by any means, but appearing by random like that it entertained me from the first to the last.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Just watched a film called 13th Floor which is basically a re-make of World on a Wire... or, more charitably, is based on the same book. You think it's gonna be a hollywood version and to some extent it is... but it's confusing enough that you can tell that at one point they just went "fuck it... let's do this" and chose the path of doing what they wanted instead of making a blockbuster. Came out the same year as The Matrix (which some have said is also inspired - albeit more simplistically - by the same book) I think, and so they were right to go weird, cos even if they'd made it the most sci-fi megabuster they could it would have still not been the main one. Now looking back it looks good and it does have more to it than its bigger, more famous brother, the reveals, while being totally inevitable once you know what's going on, are no less stomach-lurching and - yes - horrifying for that. If you haven't seen it you should watch it.
 

WashYourHands

Cat Malogen
I've been using this period of being alone for a bit to look through all the hundreds of links I've saved in my favourites intending to watch/listen/read etc but never quite got round to. Yesterday I came across a film called A Simple Favour - I had no idea whatsoever what it was, why it was there, who was in it etc The only thing I could say was that presumably at some point someone had recommended it or something I'd read had intrigued me in some way at some point - though not quite enough to actually watch it.
Anyway I had nowt better to do so I dived in blind and... well still none the wiser as to what it was doing there, but I enjoyed it well enough I guess. A queasy mix of black comedy and one of those kinda twisty turny murder type stories where each new reveal changes your opinion of everyone involved. Queasy, not cos those things don't go together, but rather because it felt as though they seemed to pick funny when a bit more plot might have worked and vice versa. Ultimately the actual final plot just didn't quite add up for me and it wasn't as sharp and neat as it wanted - in fact needed - to be to really pack the intended punch.
Everything I've said sounds negative and that's not really fair though. It kept me watching and enjoying all the way through, I think maybe cos strong performances from the three leads, especially the women (I think that guy is just creepy by nature) made it work, along with a general kinda exuberance that permeated the film all the way through and which elevated scenes and plotlines which could have felt cliched to instead having a kind of knockabout charm.
Not essential by any means, but appearing by random like that it entertained me from the first to the last.

initial lockdown fantasy was to plough through the hundreds of films on hard drives pilfered down the years, but as this was a fantasy and her indoors said “let’s do everything David Lynch when the kids are in bed” instead, I put a gas mask on, hid in our wardrobe and talked backwards.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Yeah I intended to loads of stuff I haven't done... basically I've watched a couple of films, learned a couple of words of Portuguese and I listlessly turn over a couple of pages of Hopscotch every day but really my cultural achievements are far from what they could/should have been.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
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.

Has anyone seen Mike Hodge's Black Rainbow?
 

woops

is not like other people
Yeah I intended to loads of stuff I haven't done... basically I've watched a couple of films, learned a couple of words of Portuguese and I listlessly turn over a couple of pages of Hopscotch every day but really my cultural achievements are far from what they could/should have been.
you are far from alone in this, just concentrate on getting to the other side if you ask me
 

luka

Well-known member
I've been watching the stupidest clips today. Orcs riding giant wolves, Keanu reeves slaying an ogre with a samurai sword, hulk vs the abomination
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
This film looks amazing. Anyone seen it? Version must have seen it at least

This is the one that is like Groundhog Day but with aliens right? It's ok I guess, was on Portuguese telly, loads of films like that are on and I'm always happy enough to watch 'em.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Watched a film called War Dogs - it was only ok but this is now the film thread so....
Jonah Hill and Miles Teller (from Whiplash and Too Old To Die Young) kinda stumble into being arms dealers - allegedly based (extremely loosely) on a sort of true story. It's basically the same as that Tom Cruise one I mentioned here where he accidentally ended up being the biggest coke smuggler in the US, or the Wolf of Wall Street where Jonah Hill and Leonardo di Caprio (from Romeo and Juliet and the Basketball Diaries) somehow end up being hugely rich but corrupt and inept share brokers. Or Rogue Trader with Ewan McGregor etc
This is very much a genre now isn't it? Someone sort of stumbles into a business which turns out to be both incredibly lucrative and peopled by imbeciles - for some time a mixture of native cunning, macho braggadocio and innate cool (even though they're baddies you've gotta make people watch it) means that despite being out of their depth, over the edge and in the red, they are ahead of the game - shagging Anna Friel, hiding obscene sums of money under the floorboards and in the toilet, snorting fucking mountains of cocaine out of the bums of faceless supermodels on their ferrari mega-yachts, all the time shouting into phones and being really stressed cos they are only one step ahead of the feds or the SFO or the cartel or whatever - oh and they're a bit worried cos their true love and the mother of their child is beginning to suspect that their biz may not be entirely legit and that that sinister guy in black sunglasses might not just be a long lost cousin ... and that's really the film apart from at the end where the director suddenly gets cold feet (or remembers his moral duty to his audience if you prefer) and they get arrested or something, pay back most of the money and give a voiceover about how they've learnt their lesson (except when they're dead - but normally they're not cos the film is based on their book).
So yeah this was one of those films - a middling one to be honest.
 
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