Film What's the Last Film You Saw? v. Tell Us What You Thought!

[BK38]

I watched "Baby Driver" (2017). It's a heist film and I thought it was really well done. It can be such a tired and cliche niche of film, but this was really good and is on par with films like Heat in my opinion. I was thoroughly entertained throughout. The characters were not complete "cut outs" like you'd see in something like the Ocean's 11 series of films (though it did play on certain archetypes) and it retained a noir-ish feel throughout. The character development was strong and the chase scenes were amazing; some serious driving going on! The protagonist is a young getaway driver who may or may not be on the autism spectrum who constantly listens to music. That brings me to my next point; what a soundtrack! Super well done and integrated into the plot flawlessly; you can tell a huge amount of thought was put into the music throughout the film. Surprisingly good, I thought it'd be just another action film for the most part, I was caught off-guard by how well-executed and layered it was. I'm feeling a 8.7/10

 

[hydroazuanacaine]

^ heard so many good things about that movie i’ve almost given in and watched it.


Berlin, I Love You

half a dozen or so short films that interweave in that they take place in the same city and every once in a while you see a character from another in the background. don’t remember it well enough to be specific, but it’s gagworthy.

 

[BK38]

^ heard so many good things about that movie i’ve almost given in and watched it.

DO it. I had my doubts but it was worth the 113 minutes.

 

[Juniper Bruhmomentius]

it was worth the 113 minutes.

Definitely. The beginning in one of the best Ive seen. The film continued to subvert expectations.

 

[I_Hate_This_Place]

Definitely. The beginning in one of the best Ive seen. The film continued to subvert expectations.

DO it. I had my doubts but it was worth the 113 minutes.

I'm going to have to add that one to my list. I'd considered watching it at one point but forgotten about it. Considering the number of people recommending it I'll definitely have to give it a watch.

 

[Wilson Wilson]

Baby Driver is great, watched it soon after release and a couple times since.

Most recent film I watched was The Gentlemen (2019) and it is fucking brilliant. I reckon you guys would love it, especially any Brits here. In fact I should go rave about it on EADD, I'm sure a few there have seen it already.

Similar vibes to Layer Cake, Snatch, and Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels. One of those gritty British gangster films that also has you cracking up laughing.

Plot revolves around a high level dealer with a huge weed empire trying to sell it and retire. Other gangs try to get in and nick it. Hijinks ensue.

Very clever film with twists and turns as well, not just a stupid action movie.

Seriously, go watch it, preferably in 4K HDR.

 

[I_Hate_This_Place]

Baby Driver is great, watched it soon after release and a couple times since.

Most recent film I watched was The Gentlemen (2019) and it is fucking brilliant. I reckon you guys would love it, especially any Brits here. In fact I should go rave about it on EADD, I'm sure a few there have seen it already.

Similar vibes to Layer Cake, Snatch, and Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels. One of those gritty British gangster films that also has you cracking up laughing.

Plot revolves around a high level dealer with a huge weed empire trying to sell it and retire. Other gangs try to get in and nick it. Hijinks ensue.

Very clever film with twists and turns as well, not just a stupid action movie.

Seriously, go watch it, preferably in 4K HDR.

Sounds like it'd be right up my alley. I'm not a Brit but enjoy British cinema. I'll have to see which services it's on & add it to the appropriate watch list. Thanks for the recommendation. (y) As for myself I watched 'Road to Perdition' last night. Seeing as it was leaving Netflix shortly & the cast looked good I figured I'd check it out. I'm generally not a huge Tom Hanks fan but I enjoyed the film none the less. I've watched a few films set in the time period recently ('The Highwaymen' & 'Public Enemies') for some reason & it fit well with what I've been watching. The film had an excellent cast & I found that it was worth catching before it left Netflix.

 

[Wilson Wilson]

I don't think it's on the streaming services yet, I got it by being a pirate.

 

[TheLoveBandit]

Code 8 (2019) <Netflix>

Made for tv film, looks like a SyFy production (quality of acting, special effects, premise). Story is set in a future much like today, but a portion of the population is born powered up (genetic mutation/evolution, not chemical spill or nefarious gene testing). We follow one man with electrical power (naturally grounded, can control electricity) as he works as a day laborer with a few other 'powered' guys on construction sites, trying to earn a little to help his ailing old mother. Some bad guys recruit him and others to do some illegal jobs, he gets caught up in it - again, a good guy, only doing it to afford medical care for his mom. Cops are on him, try to turn him into a rat which he struggles with since he wants to be good and do good. Plus factors for the movie are that it goes well within it's constraints (powers aren't stretched beyond imagination, people are still people with normal motivations and interaction, etc). Minus factors are SyFy level writing, acting, etc. We'll give this 4/10.

 

[TheLoveBandit]

Freaks (2018 ) <Netflix>

Not to be confused with the 1932 classic (seen that, it is a classic). This one stars Emile Hirsch, whom I viewed through the entirety as a thin Jack Black trying to do a serious sci-fi role...which didn't help it, as a father of a young girl. She's never allowed outside or to interact with others, and the few interactions cause him to freak out...and we witness subtle things are wrong when she does interact with outsiders. What we come to find is she has powers she doesn't understand or know (he knows, but never taught her about them), as the world has a sub-population of genetically mutated people with various powers (odd, how I keep finding such films, innit?) which were subsequently outlawed for fear of them waging war on the normal people. As the story unfolds, we find an ice cream man trying to abduct the girl, turns out to be her maternal grandfather who wants to use her and her powers (he has his own). The missing mom in this story? She was thought dead (captured by the police), but grandpa wants the girl to help free mom, dad didn't know mom was alive but doesn't want to endanger the child. So, we get a little bit of family drama there, and some social tension as the neighbors have interaction with the girl. I won't spoil the ending, for those daring to watch, but all this film really has going for it is a few new ideas on 'powers' with decent special effects, but it's weighed down by shallow characters (the grandpa is great, IMO), and an ending that feels like a lazy, ugly twist. Maybe you see it coming, maybe you don't, it doesn't matter a lot. Seems like the ending was made in hopes of spawning a sequel (they better not), and in doing so kinda wrecked any sense of what's going on up to that point. 4/10.

 

[CFC]

I watched "Brightburn" (2019) and it was nothing to write home about really. It was a simple idea that was decently executed I suppose, a little too heavy on the jump-scares and a little too stingy with regards to originality. It's a simple premise and this will be a short review as a result, this is basically all you need to know: Creepy-evil-child-superman. There, I just saved you an hour and a half. 3.7/10.

They could have done a *lot* with the evil-Superman idea, but did nothing particularly interesting or original in this movie imo. Elizabeth Banks was the only bright spark.

 

[I_Hate_This_Place]

I don't think it's on the streaming services yet, I got it by being a pirate.

I see. I'll keep that in mind. I haven't put on that particular hat in years.

Come to think of it I really should expedite getting some storage. I don't have much in the way of storage space ATM. I have an old 2TB external HD but it's virtually full & disk health checks indicate it's failing. I've got it set aside until I replace it in which case I'll do one last hail mary file transfer off it to the new one. I can never make up my mind if I should just spend 160-200$ & grab a 10-12TB drive or make the plunge & grab a NAS setup of some sort. Just plugging said external HD into a router for a make do NAS setup or not basically. At that point considering the cost increase if I get an actual NAS (diskless or otherwise) I run into issues deciding what I would really need or if building my own setup wouldn't be an option? I'm getting off-topic though. Your post just made think of the fact that I upgraded my internet to a 500Mbps connection when I dropped cable. It seems like a lot of bandwidth just going to waste when it could be serving me a library of my own content for my own network

Code 8 (2019) <Netflix>

Made for tv film, looks like a SyFy production (quality of acting, special effects, premise). Story is set in a future much like today, but a portion of the population is born powered up (genetic mutation/evolution, not chemical spill or nefarious gene testing). We follow one man with electrical power (naturally grounded, can control electricity) as he works as a day laborer with a few other 'powered' guys on construction sites, trying to earn a little to help his ailing old mother. Some bad guys recruit him and others to do some illegal jobs, he gets caught up in it - again, a good guy, only doing it to afford medical care for his mom. Cops are on him, try to turn him into a rat which he struggles with since he wants to be good and do good. Plus factors for the movie are that it goes well within it's constraints (powers aren't stretched beyond imagination, people are still people with normal motivations and interaction, etc). Minus factors are SyFy level writing, acting, etc. We'll give this 4/10.

Freaks (2018 ) <Netflix>

Not to be confused with the 1932 classic (seen that, it is a classic). This one stars Emile Hirsch, whom I viewed through the entirety as a thin Jack Black trying to do a serious sci-fi role...which didn't help it, as a father of a young girl. She's never allowed outside or to interact with others, and the few interactions cause him to freak out...and we witness subtle things are wrong when she does interact with outsiders. What we come to find is she has powers she doesn't understand or know (he knows, but never taught her about them), as the world has a sub-population of genetically mutated people with various powers (odd, how I keep finding such films, innit?) which were subsequently outlawed for fear of them waging war on the normal people. As the story unfolds, we find an ice cream man trying to abduct the girl, turns out to be her maternal grandfather who wants to use her and her powers (he has his own). The missing mom in this story? She was thought dead (captured by the police), but grandpa wants the girl to help free mom, dad didn't know mom was alive but doesn't want to endanger the child. So, we get a little bit of family drama there, and some social tension as the neighbors have interaction with the girl. I won't spoil the ending, for those daring to watch, but all this film really has going for it is a few new ideas on 'powers' with decent special effects, but it's weighed down by shallow characters (the grandpa is great, IMO), and an ending that feels like a lazy, ugly twist. Maybe you see it coming, maybe you don't, it doesn't matter a lot. Seems like the ending was made in hopes of spawning a sequel (they better not), and in doing so kinda wrecked any sense of what's going on up to that point. 4/10.

Back on the film topic at hand I would say I agree fully with TheLoveBandit's overview of the movies mentioned. Having relatively recently watched them both myself I would concur with the statements made regarding the films in question. (y)

As for myself I finally got around to watching 'Okja'. It was an interesting film as I've come to expect when watching Bong Joon-ho's films. I found it to be worth the time I spent watching it. I enjoyed the film. The mix of relatively light hearted moments combined with the juxtaposition of various more serious subject matter that the film addresses fit quite well IMHO. I found the cast of the film to fit the roles quite well. I enjoyed Tilda Swinton's performance as Lucy & Nancy Mirando. I also found Jake Gyllenhaal's character to be an interesting performance. Overall a film that I found to be worthwhile.

 

[psy997]

I can never make up my mind if I should just spend 160-200$ & grab a 10-12TB drive or make the plunge & grab a NAS setup of some sort. Just plugging said external HD into a router for a make do NAS setup or not basically. At that point considering the cost increase if I get an actual NAS (diskless or otherwise) I run into issues deciding what I would really need or if building my own setup wouldn't be an option?

I grabbed an 8Tb external for $110 a few months back.

 

[sekio]

I just watched The Mandela Effect (2019).

Short one liner: Couple loses daughter, man goes schizo. Daughter reappears, now the wife goes schizo. Solution: Break into the university campus, merk out the turbo nerd who runs the place, then run a forkbomb on a quantum supercomputer, observing all possible events across all possible realities, Erwin Schrodigner says "fuck this I'm out", consensus reality shits the bed, the twist? they all lived happily ever after.

Likes: It's basiacally a script cribbed from old 4chan /x/ posts. They went through the effort of making props that feed into the "mandela efffect". VFX team earned their keep doing trippy datamosh effects too. Movies about simulations go well with doing ketamine. The supercompter is a big glowing black Kubrick monolith (or possibly designed by Seymour Cray), natch. Filmed on a "low budget", whatever that means.

Dislikes: This is one of those movies rhat seems to subscribe to the "baffle them with bullshit" school of filmwriting. To the average unwashed cretin they are presented with all these fragments of Big Ideas and expected to cobble them into a patchwork mysticism in lieu of actual understanding of the concepts. Put 'quantum' in front of anything and people assume "this is too complex for ME to understand!", or even worse, come up with wacky shit like What The Bleep Do We Know? (a.k.a. Where The Bleep Did We Scam The Production Budget For This From). A stream of faceless "experts" making radical claims,
Mr. Game Programmer Guy makes the claim that writing code for quantum computers is "similar to regular C code" (it's anything but, I still don't have a damn clue what exactly a Hadamard gate does)
Quantum computers are not some sort of reality-destroying superweapon either. Sure, they make some previously hard math problems into easier ones (like factoring numbers) which kind of breaks some encryption methods, but at the end of the day it's not going to literally act as a deus ex machina.
This reality-destroying quantum computer, by the way, is on a totally unsecured university campus, in a seemingly disused area, behind a single keycard-locked door, and conveniently has a fucking root console just always running and logged in.. Passwords? We don't need no steenking passwords! We're federales! Alas, no scenes of the gang teaming up to hack the gibson.

Also, FWIW, "Mandela effects" in the film: Berenstain/Berenstein Bears, the Monopoly man's lack of a monocle, Curious George lacks a tail. It's not "Luke, I am your father", it's "No, I am your father" in Star Wars V. Jiffy/Jif peanut butter. Looney Tunes vs Toons. And, uh, Mandela's funeral.

My explanation? Humans are big wet squicky sacks of meat with a garnish of electricity. It's a fucking miracle we can manage to form a society at all the way the human body is built. I rejoyce in my fallability, it means I get to learn something new. I can't be right all the time. I'm already right enough of the time that I verge on being a smartass, actually...

 

[Shady's Fox]

Freaks (2018 ) <Netflix>

Not to be confused with the 1932 classic (seen that, it is a classic). This one stars Emile Hirsch, whom I viewed through the entirety as a thin Jack Black trying to do a serious sci-fi role...which didn't help it, as a father of a young girl. She's never allowed outside or to interact with others, and the few interactions cause him to freak out...and we witness subtle things are wrong when she does interact with outsiders. What we come to find is she has powers she doesn't understand or know (he knows, but never taught her about them), as the world has a sub-population of genetically mutated people with various powers (odd, how I keep finding such films, innit?) which were subsequently outlawed for fear of them waging war on the normal people. As the story unfolds, we find an ice cream man trying to abduct the girl, turns out to be her maternal grandfather who wants to use her and her powers (he has his own). The missing mom in this story? She was thought dead (captured by the police), but grandpa wants the girl to help free mom, dad didn't know mom was alive but doesn't want to endanger the child. So, we get a little bit of family drama there, and some social tension as the neighbors have interaction with the girl. I won't spoil the ending, for those daring to watch, but all this film really has going for it is a few new ideas on 'powers' with decent special effects, but it's weighed down by shallow characters (the grandpa is great, IMO), and an ending that feels like a lazy, ugly twist. Maybe you see it coming, maybe you don't, it doesn't matter a lot. Seems like the ending was made in hopes of spawning a sequel (they better not), and in doing so kinda wrecked any sense of what's going on up to that point. 4/10.

am gonna watch this one, ty.

 

[Wilson Wilson]

Come to think of it I really should expedite getting some storage. I don't have much in the way of storage space ATM. I have an old 2TB external HD but it's virtually full & disk health checks indicate it's failing. I've got it set aside until I replace it in which case I'll do one last hail mary file transfer off it to the new one. I can never make up my mind if I should just spend 160-200$ & grab a 10-12TB drive or make the plunge & grab a NAS setup of some sort. Just plugging said external HD into a router for a make do NAS setup or not basically. At that point considering the cost increase if I get an actual NAS (diskless or otherwise) I run into issues deciding what I would really need or if building my own setup wouldn't be an option? I'm getting off-topic though. Your post just made think of the fact that I upgraded my internet to a 500Mbps connection when I dropped cable. It seems like a lot of bandwidth just going to waste when it could be serving me a library of my own content for my own network

My personal setup is a 1TB SSD inside an Intel NUC, 8th gen i3 model is just fine, stuck 16GB RAM in there (probably half that would have been fine but oh well) and then I installed Linux and set it up as a Plex server.

Now I torrent the films/TV I wanna watch and SSH them to that box. It can serve media content throughout my LAN as well as the outside internet if I enable remote access and do some port forwarding (obviously, if you do this, forward only the necessary port to the necessary machine, enable automatic updates on that machine, and reboot it regularly).

One thing I really love about Plex is the ease of use compared to most other competitors. Originally I wanted to use something open source like Kodi, but Plex "just works" and has apps for smart TVs, consoles, phones, tablets, etc. Just log in and your server streams whatever you want it to.

If the format of the content isn't compatible with your device it will do an on the fly transcode using ffmpeg on the backend, and you can set it to use hardware transcoding which the NUC supports (QuickSync) and it works fast on the 8th gen NUC since it has the Iris Plus iGPU (other NUCs have only Intel UHD iGPUs, much much worse performance) but obviously transcoding will degrade quality. Luckily most modern, reasonable streaming boxes, smart TVs, smartphones etc will handle HEVC natively and HEVC is what you want especially for 4K content.

There are a few downsides I don't like. No native player for my Linux computers and the web player cannot play HEVC (this is the fault of the browser, to be fair, but why no native Plex Media Player for Linux?) and you do have to pay for a Plex Pass to get some features like hardware transcoding (it's like £3 a month or £60 lifetime, so not bad though tbh).

Oh and if you do look into this, one cool trick, assuming you run your server on Linux, is to set the transcoding directory to /dev/shm. This gives you a ramdisk for transcodes which is MUCH MUCH faster than using your storage. Can't remember if this is a premium feature or not, I don't think so from the top of my head.

Anyway yeah this has been my setup for a long time and has served me well.

 

[CFC]

Code 8 (2019) <Netflix>

Made for tv film, looks like a SyFy production (quality of acting, special effects, premise). Story is set in a future much like today, but a portion of the population is born powered up (genetic mutation/evolution, not chemical spill or nefarious gene testing). We follow one man with electrical power (naturally grounded, can control electricity) as he works as a day laborer with a few other 'powered' guys on construction sites, trying to earn a little to help his ailing old mother. Some bad guys recruit him and others to do some illegal jobs, he gets caught up in it - again, a good guy, only doing it to afford medical care for his mom. Cops are on him, try to turn him into a rat which he struggles with since he wants to be good and do good. Plus factors for the movie are that it goes well within it's constraints (powers aren't stretched beyond imagination, people are still people with normal motivations and interaction, etc). Minus factors are SyFy level writing, acting, etc. We'll give this 4/10.

It was on my "to watch" list for a while but I had reservations and when I finally sat down to watch a few weeks back I only managed to get about 1/3 of the way through and found some of the ideas really tacky/cringey. I may try again, but I was thinking maybe 2/10 based on what I've seen so far.

 

[ChemicallyEnhanced]

May (2002) - I love this movie. Angela Bettis is amazing at believably portraying the inappropriate, awkward girl (probably why I relate so much) and at portraying lonely, mentally unstable characters (she must have really hurt her back with how she single-handedly carried the entire 2002 TV-Movie of Carrie...that thing sucked ass but she was amazing as Carrie White). May is very lonely (and very awkward and weird). She has a lazy eye and had to wear an eyepatch as a kid causing the other kids to ostracise her and call her a pirate. Her mother tells her "if you don't have any friends, make one" so her mother gives her a porcelain doll she made which May is not allowed to take out of it's glass box. As an adult (early twenties I'd guess) May lives alone and still has no friends except for Suzie (the doll) whom she talks to as though it is a real person and who is her "best friend". Despite this she desperately want to make a Real friend. I don't wanna give too much away if you don't know, but let's just say it is a pseudo-Frankenstein movie as May repeatedly fails in relationships/friendships and decides to take her mothers advice to MAKE a friend a little too literally. The movie is part horror, part drama and part black comedy. This movie had the potential to be pretty bad but honestly, Angela Bettis does such an outstanding job really making the character feel real (even in very unlikely scenario's). I felt a real connection with May. I loved this. I love how after she accidentally cracks the glass of Suzies box, throughout the movie the glass gradually splinters more and more reflecting Mays fracturing psyche.

 

[I_Hate_This_Place]

I grabbed an 8Tb external for $110 a few months back.

Nice! That seems like a hell of a good price! IIRC the lowest price I've seen 8TB is $130. (y)

My personal setup is a 1TB SSD inside an Intel NUC, 8th gen i3 model is just fine, stuck 16GB RAM in there (probably half that would have been fine but oh well) and then I installed Linux and set it up as a Plex server.

Now I torrent the films/TV I wanna watch and SSH them to that box. It can serve media content throughout my LAN as well as the outside internet if I enable remote access and do some port forwarding (obviously, if you do this, forward only the necessary port to the necessary machine, enable automatic updates on that machine, and reboot it regularly).

One thing I really love about Plex is the ease of use compared to most other competitors. Originally I wanted to use something open source like Kodi, but Plex "just works" and has apps for smart TVs, consoles, phones, tablets, etc. Just log in and your server streams whatever you want it to.

If the format of the content isn't compatible with your device it will do an on the fly transcode using ffmpeg on the backend, and you can set it to use hardware transcoding which the NUC supports (QuickSync) and it works fast on the 8th gen NUC since it has the Iris Plus iGPU (other NUCs have only Intel UHD iGPUs, much much worse performance) but obviously transcoding will degrade quality. Luckily most modern, reasonable streaming boxes, smart TVs, smartphones etc will handle HEVC natively and HEVC is what you want especially for 4K content.

There are a few downsides I don't like. No native player for my Linux computers and the web player cannot play HEVC (this is the fault of the browser, to be fair, but why no native Plex Media Player for Linux?) and you do have to pay for a Plex Pass to get some features like hardware transcoding (it's like £3 a month or £60 lifetime, so not bad though tbh).

Oh and if you do look into this, one cool trick, assuming you run your server on Linux, is to set the transcoding directory to /dev/shm. This gives you a ramdisk for transcodes which is MUCH MUCH faster than using your storage. Can't remember if this is a premium feature or not, I don't think so from the top of my head.

Anyway yeah this has been my setup for a long time and has served me well.

Sounds like a nice setup. I'm not making any plans / changes at this point in time as my wife & I will be moving later this year. Long story short with the help of family we ended up acquiring our first home (house) not long before the whole CV situation become an issue. It needs some renovations before we move in & the work is taking longer to get started as a result of things being as they are ATM thus the delay in moving in. Sorry I'm getting off-topic; I'm just happy that hopefully things will improve for my wife & I. I plan on setting up a home entertainment room / setup in the new home though & I was planning on trying to do something somewhat similar. I've heard some good things about with going with Plex. Thanks for the recommendations.

 

[TheLoveBandit]

Spenser Confidential (2020)

Movie reboot/remake of the old 80's tv series (Spenser: For Hire), with Markie Mark as the lead role. We pick up with him as he's coming out of serving a prison sentence, prior to which he was a cop. So, ex-cop & ex-con, he comes out wanting to move from Boston to Arizona and get away from all the drama and old faces. Spenser did his time for attacking his superior while on the force, as he believed he was a dirty cop (we have a boy scout of sorts on our hands). His halfway house is run by Alan Arkin (old friend, runs a boxing gym), who puts Spenser in a room with another ex-con "Hawk" (played very well by Winston Duke) who is a hulking man but living fairly simple and healthy life. Last character for the good guys is Spenser's estranged wife (Iliza Shlesinger), who likely broke the hot-crazy scale. Spenser catches a newscast of a good cop he knew supposedly killing himself (something he wouldn't do) as the widow is interviewed with her young son. With nothing really to do, Spenser decides to check into it for her, as he suspects it is part of the same dirty cop group. Our lead bad buy is played by Bokeem Woodbine (if you don't know the name, you'll recognize the face), who does his role pretty well. So, about 20-30min of flashbacks and background to get the new caper kicked off, about 40min of following the clues, and we wrap up with 20min of showdown* and 10min of ever after ... with an opening for a sequel (possible). The *showdown is noted because at the end, we bring in about 2-3 significant plot changes before we confront the bad guy. These are noted because they were 100% stripped out of old movies and tv shows (hey, lets throw in some Dominican gangsters, and some real estate, and some other people you never heard of) and had absolutely nil to do with the story up to that point. We'll call it shit writing and move on. On the positive, his wife is smoking hot throughout (no nudity); Mark plays the role very well (Boston accents, casual nice guy with a tough streak), and good supporting cast. On the downside, meh. I never watched the old tv series, so that's not affecting my opinion, I just came away a little above meh. You can do better with another film, and you can do a lot worse with many others. 6.5/10.


= = = = =

As for myself I finally got around to watching 'Okja'. It was an interesting film as I've come to expect when watching Bong Joon-ho's films. I found it to be worth the time I spent watching it. I enjoyed the film.

I'll pause between s1 and s2 on Altered Carbon to give this a whirl.