Camo's Movie Log

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Buffalo 66 is a favorite of Matt's. I just can't even stand to look at that actor's bug eyed ratty dirty face.

I also loved Brief Encounter.



Buffalo 66 is a favorite of Matt's. I just can't even stand to look at that actor's bug eyed ratty dirty face.

I also loved Brief Encounter.
I completely despise Vincent Gallo and expected to and i think on some level wanted to hate it but it really worked for me. I think you'd maybe like it if you could get past Gallo.



I completely despise Vincent Gallo and expected to and i think on some level wanted to hate it but it really worked for me. I think you'd maybe like it if you could get past Gallo.
I will try it



25th Hour -
+



Not got that much to say about this, i actually watched the last half an hour of this on tv a few years back so i think that effected my enjoyment a little, still enjoyed it though. I'm definitely not as big of a fan as Edward Norton as most; i pretty much hate his performance in both AHX and Primal Fear, he was very good here though. The best and most baffling thing about the film was that the dude who plays Clay Davis was in it and he actually says "Sheeeeet" .God have to wonder what he thought when he was asked to do it, that guy hasn't just been typecast he's being hired for one phrase haha. Nah really the best thing was the script i think, his speech in front of the mirror was great. Alot of it was, really loved his conversation with Frank in the club too. My only complaint is that it felt a little uneven, there was loads of different things going on and some were more interesting than others, could've done with being a bit shorter.



Something Wild -




Been meaning to watch this for ages as i've heard alot of good things, with Demme's passing i thought i should give it a try. The only movies i've seen from him are Rachel Getting Married which i didn't like much and Silence of the Lambs which i liked alot when i was younger but wasn't into the last time i tried it. The title pretty much spells this out; it's about a regular working guy who demonstrates a very minor 'wild side' at the start by delibarately not paying for his meal at a cafe despite having the money to do so, this is noticed by an actual wild girl who takes him on a unsavoury adventure with very little notice. It's pretty hilarious his reaction to it, the typical thing would be an uptight guy and he is a bit but it's more in how lightning fast everything happens, he doesn't have a second to think about things he just has to decide right away if he's going to continue with it and before he knows it he is handcuffed to a bed with this thieving nutcase whose motives in all this aren't exactly clear but it feels like they can't be good.

Someone in the RIP Demme thread mentioned the tonal shifts in this there absolutely is. Must admit i wish i hadn't read that comment before watching as this would have been a big surprise, it starts off as a really fast-paced crazy adventure with nothing much between them, then a relationship starts getting built between them and while Lulu doesn't drastically change they do start to develop a true bond and have some truthful moments together and then it randomly goes pretty damn dark with Ray Lliotta's entrance who was really good for the record. In some ways this feels like multiple different familiar films combined, it had various typical things; the mid-life crisis wild adventure, the mysterious girl, etc but in how energetic it is and in how ambitious it is i think it works out a very fun and well made film. Both Griffith and Daniels are very good. One odd thing is that both Charles and Lulu are very likable when they really shouldn't be; he's got a wife and kids yet didn't hesitate to have sex with and more or less runaway with her and she is a thief and just pretty much a criminal. Oddly though i don't think many would come out actually disliking them. Anyway good film. RIP Jonathan Demme.



I'm a big fan of The 25th Hour and Something Wild.

I read somewhere that his performance in Something Wild is what won Ray Liotta his role in Goodfellas after Marty Scorsese saw it. I can understand why.



MacGruber -
+



This was pretty uneven for me otherwise it could have been a new favourite comedy. I don't think it got particularly interesting until MacGruber, Piper and Vicki started working together which was 20-30 minutes in and that's alot in a 90 minute movie. There was also some jokes that did nothing for me: the celery joke and MacGrubers sex noises jokes for instance, i did actually laugh when it transitioned from Broken Wings into the sex noises but the noises themselves weren't funny and the second time with his wifes ghost didn't even work that way as it was obvious what was happening. Some of it was actually funny though i thought; I loved MacGruber always making Vicki dress up as various people "Everything will be okay we are only 7 blocks away. 7 blocks! Ok 20 you got me, there was no spaces closer. There was plenty of closer space. Not without a meter!", and i cracked up at MacGruber saying he didn't know why ****h hated him and killed his wife before telling the story of how they were close in college and she got engaged to ****h before he started having sex with her then got her to leave him then had her abort his baby so they could get a fresh start. Most of the jokes in this are really dumb and it's nothing new; it just embraces and makes fun of the various action movie cliches like has been done loads before, i think at times they did a really good job though and for the most part it was fun. Pretty good performances too, i'd like to have seen a little more of Val Kilmer as he was really great as ****h and i don't think Will Forte was important here, he was fine but it's definitely not an 'i couldn't see anyone else play MacGruber' case.

The Burning -



Another mixed bag for me. The first half of the film outside of a few moments was really, really boring; it was more of a corny, teen drama film and there were so many fake-outs it was comical; this was made in 1981 so i get that they wouldn't have been as common then but watching this in 2017 especially the way they were done did nothing for me. There was also some really gross things that you just kind of have to ignore in slasher and similar films from this era; Alfred being played up as someone to feel sorry for, a bully victim when the first time we see him he's being a creepy pervert for example. There was no explanation as well, it was so stupid, he was trying to scare the girl by watching her shower because the guys pick on him, what? Well i did mostly ignore that anyway. Think it picked up with whatever her names death in the skinny dipping scene. Even during the boring first half i think there was some stuff done well, namely the score and the suspense, both of those are related obviously looking forward to the reveal of his face added to it too though. I actually think the look of him as well as the gore was surprisingly good when you consider when this was made and the budget. One thing i found interesting about this was that there was no real attempt to establish that Cropsey was a bad person before he was burned, we were told he was a bully but we only saw him sleeping before what happened. An odd way of doing this as you'd think they'd want to make us dislike Cropsey on some level before the incident, instead you actually think i'd hope i wouldn't respond this way but his response is completely logical in that his life has been completely destroyed and we don't even really know why. Acting is never of importance and is rarely any good in films like this, it's actually normally bad which is why i understand people not being able to get into slashers, it was funny seeing Jason Alexander and Fisher Stevens though. Mixed response from me, the second half was a really good slasher i thought but the first half was very dull.



I smiled when I opened this thread and a still from Macgruber popped up immediately. I still haven't seen it but it's nice to be reminded we should seek out movies that have no other purpose but to be fun.
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Letterboxd



I smiled when I opened this thread and a still from Macgruber popped up immediately. I still haven't seen it but it's nice to be reminded we should seek out movies that have no other purpose but to be fun.
Honestly it really is at times. Nothing you've not seen before; another action movie parody and alot of it is really dumb but it is pretty fun. Val Kilmer is great in particular.

Edit: Just noticed it blocked Kilmers characters name which is Cvnth



You forgot to list Holly Hunter in the future fame roll call of The Burning.
I didn't mention her because I somehow didn't notice her while watching. Only read that she was in it afterwards, kind of amazed I noticed Fisher Stevens who i've not seen in much and not her.



The Miracle of Morgan's Creek



My second Sturges after Sullivan's Travels. Why the hell have i not heard this mentioned much? I kinda loved it, liked it alot more than Sullivan's Travels. I was expecting a screwball comedy but i wouldn't call this one, or at most i'd call this light-screwball as it's actually pretty down to earth despite being silly sometimes. Don't really know who they are but Eddie Brecken and Betty Hutton were great together, Brecken was really sweet the way he was so nervous, they kept falling back on the Norval stuttering joke; didn't bother me though as it worked for me it was very charming. I genuinely found it hilarious everytime Trudy's dad walked in at the wrong moment and thought Norval was treating his daughter wrong or whatever, William Demarest's performance as the dad was over the top and corny but again i found it charming in a lighthearted silly way. Trudy spent loads of the film crying and being awful to Norval yet i didn't dislike her or find her annoying, mostly due to Norval's overreactions and naivete, they worked very well together. Dunno what else to say really, maybe i was just in the perfect mood as there was quite a few things here that should have annoyed me but they didn't and i had a really good time watching it. Hope some members are thinking of checking this out for the Countdown, it was just a random pick for me and i'm glad i did as it has a chance of making my list.




Get Out




Good film. The one thing that's too bad is that i'd have loved to go into this completely blind but that wasn't really possible. Before it was even released it was pretty impossible to escape what it was about, even my mum mentioned it to me. Some of the tension and the weirdness was taken out of the film for me because i was generally aware of what it's about. Not entirely thankfully, i'd read a spoiler on this site but it wasn't major thankfully so i still didn't know why this was all going to happen to him. There was a few other moments that the films tension, scares failed for me. A few times i cracked up when i don't think i was supposed to; the scene where Walter sprints toward him before turning just as he reached him then when Chris turns around Georgina is standing in the window for instance. Don't know, maybe i read the scenes intentions wrong though and i was supposed to laugh as the music during this scene was pretty goofy, almost like music you'd hear in Scary Movie or something that was making fun of the music you normally here in horror films.

Daniel Kaluuya was great. His reaction to all the weirdness in the first third before the extended family arrived was like one big reaction to white people awkwardly trying to show their not racist. I'm not just talking about those scenes i mean just about anytime anyone other than his girlfriend spoke to him that was the vibe he gave off by his demeanor and it was awesome haha. Speaking of his girlfriend, their relationship was done well i thought, it felt a bit artificial at first but when they met the family every scene he spent alone with her he came across like a completely different person; much more comfortable. That sort of feeling carried over when he briefly met the blind art dealer, he kind of took a deep breath and sat next to him and it was like he had reentered reality, someone not acting creepy, defining him entirely by his race or treating him like some sort of weird curiosity; like a visiting alien into their white bubble. I kind of loved that, it was like a brief intermission from the general tone of the film. Think alot of the points the film made were obvious stuff everyone should know, but I can only imagine it was an attempt at least at an insight into how it is to be black, your race being a defining characteristic; something that is constantly in play in situations where it really shouldn't be. Don't like talking about this stuff as a white person as i obviously don't/can't really understand this stuff and i'm probably way off so i'll stop now but even if we take race out of it the weird tone was done really well. My least favourite part was actually the last third. There was good stuff there definitely but that spoiler i mentioned earlier implied that Rose was in on it and before that i had thought she wasn't so it didn't entirely work for me regrettably. Can't say for sure if i wouldn't have seen that coming anyway but it took something out of the reveal and made me think the blind guy was in on it too.

I liked all of the other performances except one. The worst part of this film was Jeremy. What the hell was with that performance? How did the director let that pass and did the actor honestly think this was good? I understand that's how his character was supposed to be but i cringed every time he opened his mouth, no i cringed every time the camera was on him, so difficult to sit through his scenes. Thank god he wasn't in it too much. So yeah good film, it probably deserves a higher rating than i've given it but some of the things it was going for didn't entirely work for me due to the films marketing and buzz. These things were done well i might add so i think it's a shame.

-



Who? I've never watched Black Mirror.
The guy pictured in your post of Get Out. The movie is in my Netflix Q, but I have yet to see it.



Which Black Mirror episode, do you remember?



Fifteen Million Merits. One of the better episodes. Seasons 1 & 2 are brilliant. Season 3, to me, was not of the same caliber though most people loved it.



Don't Breathe
-

I listened to a really horrifying podcast once that i'm about 90% sure this film was inspired by. The guy wasn't blind but basically young people broke into the wrong persons house with horrifying results. The use of sound here was outstanding, at one point i got bored though, not sure why exactly i just got anxious for this to end; to the point that i was considering turning it off with 15 minutes left. Never had as drastic of a turn with a movie as this ever i don't think but at one point i just didn't want to watch it anymore.

Detention
+


Man, this was great. The first 20 minutes and random patches here and there stopped this from being a
. It took me a while to realize that the whole point of this film was that it's going to be horribly dated at one point: it pretty much is now and that's why i love it. Think i'd like it alot less if i saw this in 2011 when most of its references were fairly relevant coz it's not the point of the film to be anything other than a snapshot of this generation and how they were, even then that's not really the point: it's just supposed to be fun and i thought it was. The most fun it got was when it got really conviluted when it added time travel and whatever else. It's a big explosion of things that it finds ridiculous in films and i love it for it.

Pontypool -


Sad i didn't like this more. I felt like i was an outside observer to the entertainment throughout because i knew it was there but i couldn't get into it, sadly.

24 Hour Party People -
+


I listened to Unknown Pleasures then Closer then watched this so of course it worked for me alot. Want to see Control soon.

The Lady From Shanghai -


The last 20 odd minutes of this are outstanding, best film ever material. The rest is such a mixed bag though; Welles accent is incredibly jarring at first and alot of the relationships aren't that well developed. Those last 20 minutes and how great the film looks guarantees this a high rating though.

Stranger Than Paradise -
-


This may be the most disappointing film ever for me. I was so ready for a
film after everything i'd heard about this and after how much i loved/liked both Dead Man and Ghost Dog. It's so so dull though, i get the point of everything and got the low-key jokes and just the subtle humour and sadness in the overall situation throughout but it was mind numbingly boring. Maybe it will work for me at a later date but for now i found this mostly very dull and at times difficult to sit through.