UKC

A clever and tightly directed Sonderbergh 'thriller' about a disturbed woman and her stalker. I only remembered it was the one filmed on a phone after reading the reviews. One peculiar thing is the black comedy looked obvious to me and is oddly not commented on much. I'd be interested in other views on this.

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/unsane

Also quite enjoyed this strangely wry look at the Korean government murdering protesters in 1980. Somehow it worked despite the flaws.

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/a_taxi_driver_2017

I watched it when it came out. Initially I thought the i Phone thing a bit of a gimmick but it seemed to work well in the confines of most of the sets. I've forgotten about any black humour but there seem to be a lot of films given that label these days with dubious claims to it, especially a few Scandi offerings  such as the one with the snowplough driver.

Just watched "Human Capital"  , a version of the parrallel lines narrative, quite good in its form but the best point was the acting. Much as I have enjoyed Liev Screiber in all his Ray Donovan episodes it makes a change for him to have lines to deliver which are a bit more than just " Geddin da f*ckin' cah!" or "Take da f*ckin' money!"

I thought Unsane was a mess. I think I spotted the "black humour", which just added to the mess, coming across as immature. 
Soderbergh's films are often a mess, I think Side Effects (with plenty of black humour) is one of the only ones that was up to scratch. 

As for the "shot on an iPhone" aspect - it added nothing to the narrative and certainly shouldn't have acted as any sort of "showing off what we can do with minimal equipment" given that they had professional studio lighting set-ups and pro lab grading and post-processing. 

It's lovely that you found it clever and tightly directed though. I wish I could have been in some way positive about it. Foy was spirited, I suppose. 

The Matt Damon character was blatant in Unsane!?

I also thought that was mostly a fair description for the snowplough film! Not optimistic about the remake though!

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/in_order_of_disappearance

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/cold_pursuit

It 'flew by' for me, even though the institutional conceit was a bit daft... rare for me these days. I thought Foy was really good... her character was paranoid (because of the stalker) and the outbreaks of triggered irrationality from otherwise trying to maintain a level of control seemed spot on. I had completely forgotten it was filmed on a phone until afterwards. 

Yes, you mentioned this in the OP. You seem to be making a lot of noise about something that didn’t distract you at all 😃

I thought it was better than I was expecting. A bit less of an improbable rampage from Liam Neeson than the Taken trilogy, but he still sorts out the baddies

It's a joy of getting older to laugh at yourself for starting to do things and realising its already been done; especially watching films I find mediocre.

The Sons of Katie Elder. 
Aside from the massive distraction of the mind-boggling casting of a 58-year-old John Wayne (looking much older, understandably given his illness at the time) as the brother of an 18-year-old (like Dean Martin said, "what sort of woman WAS this Katie Elder?!"), I rather liked this Western which not only had a very simple storyline but went a little further in giving remarkably little background to the main players. Maybe that wasn't deliberate, maybe at the time it was seen as a flaw, but in these days of often having to spell out character backgrounds in painful detail, it felt refreshing to me. 

All we know is that Wayne has had some sort of career as a "gunman", whatever that's meant to mean, one of his brothers is a bit of a ne'er-do-well, another is a store manager, and the youngest has been sent to college. George Kennedy as the hired gun is remarkably mysterious, and all the more effective for it - all we need to know is that he is a hired gun and possibly just a little more sadistic/psychotic than his profession demands. 
To be honest I was disappointed that there was a big "climactic" action shootout - I'd been thinking that the whole thing was going to be quieter and more interesting than that. 
Wayne, despite his horrendous miscasting, actually fares well, as does most of the cast, but it's actually Kennedy and especially Dennis Hopper (as pretty much the only character with genuine conscience) and Jeremy Slate (as Ben, the deputy, the only character with any development at all) who stand out. 
It's a Henry Hathaway western starring an ageing John Wayne...it pretty much does what it says on the tin...

An unusual piece has popped up on Netflix, not sure if it's a film or a series, called Dealer.

It involves a young French film producer thrown into the deep end of a drug war dispute, supposedly all done on Go Pro and video camera, each episode ten minutes long and very shaky camera work.

Very fast moving, high octane stuff , I've just watched the first one and the cameraman is already having second thoughts about the venture.

Re: Dealer  (or Caid, French title)Good action film ultimately spoiled by its format:

100 mins of action divided into ten episodes, each one also having a title insert after the first minute or so of playing, works out at over twenty interruptions over the course of the film. The end result is that there are more stops per hour than you would have to suffer watching a typical channel 5 US cop show.

Pity, really.

Also watched Killer Joe. We touched upon the notion of black comedy higher up the thread: well, this film is really "pushing the edges of the envelope".

Is “Dealer” intended to be watched in a single sitting? 

Hard to tell, in practice, I did it in three, The breaks were still annoying but it's definitely worth a watch despite this because the narrative premise is realistic and very scary ( and not entirely improbable)

Ok for novelty, I suppose, but I hope the bitesize format doesn't catch on.

BBC2 in the late 1980s and early 1990s used to commission things designed for sub-10-minute episodes to slot into the the 22:20 - 22:30 gap between whatever 50 minute documentary or drama was on at 21:30, and Newsnight. 

Those were intended to be watched discretely. 

I remember  them vaguely . Were they one off or in sequences like Dealer? The action in Dealer follows on in a matter of seconds or minutes., so it's literally like watching Chicago PD .

Bit of both. I am struggling to recall a specific example though! I had thought Peter Greenaway’s “A TV Dante” was one, but that was four 20 minute pieces for Channel 4...

Crock of Gold a few rounds with Shane MacGowan.

I watched this a few days ago and enjoyed it.

It's the story of his life from early years and in the music scene from the 1970s in the punk scene on up until the present.

He has had a nasty fall and broken his pelvis and is taking a long time to recover from that.

By the end of the film I felt quite sympathetic towards him, I have always like his music.

It's on BBC 4 on Tuesday night at 10pm

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000t84r

I enjoyed Crock of Gold and I don't even own a single album by The Pogues (and have come to realise that Fairytale of New York is not that representative, and not that good!) 

Worth mentioning that it's a Julien Temple film and therefore is a bit "arty" in documentary terms

Yes there are some good animations by Ralph Steadman as well.

Shane was born in Pembury in Kent on Christmas Day 1957, his parents were visiting his aunt there when his Mum went into labour.

So he's a Man of Kent apparently.

It was a bit odd seeing Johnny Depp playing guitar onstage with a lot of professional musicians.

I revisited Jennifer Kent's 2014 "The Babadook" a few years after having been a bit underwhelmed by it. Very glad I did so, as it is excellent and very much deserves the near-universal acclaim heaped upon it. Not a million miles from the later "Hereditary" but about an hour shorter and without the bonkers ending. 

Psychological horror film with a sort of ambiguity over whether it's all in someone's imagination. Basically a portrait of a woman's accelerating mental deterioration. 
Not many laughs in it...

Did you manage to watch it without subtitles? I lasted about six minutes before admitting defeat and turning them on! 

Yes I watch most things with subtitles, or I'm straining to pick up the dialogue.

Alien...all except the latest, in order of release.

Here's my summary:

Alien - fantastic, one of the great Sci-Fi films. Has an epic feel to it.

Aliens - also fantastic. But not quite as fantastic as Alien. Good characters.

Alien 3 - No where near as good as the first two. But not terrible.

Alien Resurrection - Utterly terrible. I have nothing good to say about this movie.

Prometheus - unintelligible but underrated. I have no idea what was going on, but liked it all the same. Not as good as Alien, but better than Aliens. Maybe.

I thought Alien Resurrection was refreshingly honest, a bit like Jurassic Park III. Both films were “we are dragging out a franchise past its sell by date, we know it, you know it, here’s some characters, they have to get from one end of the island or spaceship to the other end, there are monsters in the way, characters will get picked off violently, there will be some infighting, and you know what? THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT THE BETTER LOVED EARLIER INSTALMENTS DID” 😃

you skipped the AVP films 

I must admit, I never drew the comparison with Jurasic Park...but you're right.

Yes, Resurection did feel like they were cashind-in on it. And yet, Prometheus felt quite new and refreshing.

I may attempt Alien v Predator after I've managed to watch Alien Covanent. But, I don't give the Predator much chance. He couldn't even get the better of Arnold Schwarzenegger...

Knock knock....stick around 

Resting Place (1986), quite a neat (inadvertent, unrelated, coincidental) companion piece to A Soldier's Story which I mentioned in February. John Lithgow as an Army Major struggling to help a black family in a somewhat backward segregated town in 1972, with the burial of their son who has been killed in combat in Vietnam. It could be criticised as being a bit "topic of the week TV movie", and all a bit neat and tidy, and having the crusading white heroes help the dumb black family, but all such criticism would be unfounded - it is very sensitively done (and did not feel as "TV movie" as I'd expected). The worst that could be said is that it's maybe a little predictable and manipulative, but that would be like criticising a Jurassic Park film for having dinosaurs in it i.e. it's MEANT to manipulate you into FEELING something. 
Also features an incredibly young Morgan Freeman who was only 48 or 49 when this was made  

Les Miserables. (2019)

Raw evocation of life and conflict in a poor Paris suburb,

Comparisons have been made with La Haine and Do the Right Thing, both valid.

If I don't see a better film this year, I won't be disappointed.

On Netflix now.

Blue Collar (1978), Paul Schrader's directorial debut and in some ways it's almost like a lurid "Hollywood" analogue of a Ken Loach film, depicting the desperation of the "poor"(*) working class being oppressed by "the system".
It's a little underrated and forgotten, I think, which is odd as its themes seem universal and timeless. 
I try not to describe too much plot on these threads but I'll give a bit of synopsis - three buddies on a Detroit car production line are all in financial dire straits and feel that their workers' union is no better than their executive bosses, and spot a criminal opportunity (stealing money). That's the first half of the film and you'd be forgiven for thinking that you are watching the most downbeat and non-funny "heist comedy with idiotically inept characters". But when it inevitably goes wrong in the second half, you realise that the depiction of these characters' lives and actions in the first half was not comedic but actually quite believable. 
Very well written (story and dialogue), superb ensemble performances (there is no one lead actor, it's split amongst Yaphet Kotto, Harvey Keitel and - playing it straight, and brilliantly - Richard Pryor), very assured direction and the bonus of a SUPERB soundtrack. 

* I say "poor", but they are also the mechanics of their own doom; an early "set the scene, show the camaraderie" sequence has them indulging in a cocaine-fuelled orgy, two of them cheating on their wives and the mothers of their children, and actually this scene WORKS by not forcing you to totally pity them, cf a lot of Ken Loach where the characters start out as absolute angels  

Land of Mine. A superb little movie based on German POWs being used to clear mines from Danish beaches post WW2. Currently on I Player https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000th6y/land-of-mine

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/land_of_mine

thanks, I remember when that came out but I didn’t manage to see it. I’ll make a point this time , of seeing it 

I enjoyed Molly's Game on Netflix  the other night.

It stars Jessica Chastain, Idris Elba and Kevin Costner.

Molly comes from a family of high achievers Olympic skiers etc, driven by her Dad played Kevin Costner.

When she gets a bad spinal injury she has to give up skiing and decides to go to Law School.

Before that starts, she gets involved with helping out at high stakes poker games and the story progresses from there.

It's quite a long film but kept my interest all the way through.

There is involvement with Italian and Russian mafias and the FBI who when they are tapping the wires keep on hearing Molly being mentioned, Idris Elba who plays her attorney says this isn't my client Molly but MDMA.

I  watched it a few months ago and enjoyed it . Isn't is one of those "based on the truth " films?

Yes it's supposed to be based on a true story and a book I think.

I watched Demolition Man (the Sylvester Stallone sci fi action comedy that pretty much launched Sandra Bullock's career). It stands up remarkably well, especially the satirical humour, and is chock full of nice early 1990s predictions of the future, some of which are uncanny (I don't think any of them are unique or original to Demolition Man but their delivery and execution is good). Slight sour note is that you get a sense of unease watching Wesley Snipes being incredibly violent, in light of ongoing allegations against him, but hey separate the person from the art, right. 

I just spotted that Kathryn Bigelow's 2017 film "Detroit" is on the BBC iPlayer. I saw this at the cinema, I haven't seen it since, but I plan to watch again soon. 
I thought it was an excellent, powerful, film. The experience of watching in 2017, during Donald Trump's first year serving as President, with all sorts of blatantly racist policies and actions popping up in the news all year, was quite a thing. 
The film does drag on in the last 20 minutes or so, with the courtroom stuff, but given that the whole film is quite demanding and basically you are having a history lesson and "doing homework" just by watching it, maybe I was just tired by then! 

(pretty much quoting my own review, from memory here...):
Special mention to Will Poulter who gave one of the most terrifying screen acting performances I've ever seen, to rank alongside Patrick McGoohan in Hell Drivers, and Robert Duvall in The Apostle. 

The Furnace

Excellent Australian film about a camel driver  hooking up with a rogue who has stolen a couple of gold ingots.Set in the same period as "The Nightingale" but not quite as brutal or depressing. Very interesting little footnote right at the end!