Topic: The Movie Thread

@LN78 I liked Dr Sleep way more than I thought I would, as people who I normally have similar tastes in these things, hated it.

Mike Flanagan's new series, The Midnight Club is on Netflix I believe. I know next to nothing about it though.

@LN78 Yeah, I really loved the director’s cut of that movie and felt it was a big improvement on the theatrical cut. A shame it isn’t in 4K and a bit bizarre given the much more favourable reception it received.

@Sable @LN78 4K has definitely brought me back to physical media as it gives more of an incentive. I’ve bought physical music for years but mostly used streaming for movies until the PS5 gave me a reason to buy 4K Blu-Rays.

@Sable @LN78 @nessisonett Same here, I've got a nice little 4K Blu Ray collection. Mainly older films that I grew up watching, which are almost like watching them for the first time again.

@JohnnyShoulder I’m definitely going to get the 4K restoration of Singin In The Rain for my mum for Christmas, it looks jaw dropping even just in trailers. I do appreciate the effort they’ve been putting into these releases, it’s less hit and miss than the Blu-Ray rollout.

@nessisonett Oooooh, that would look good in 4K! I do want get something from that era, as the earliest I've got is from the late 70's onwards. The Ten Commandments is supposed to be a good transfer but not sure if it my bag these days.

@JohnnyShoulder From what I’ve heard from older relatives, The Ten Commandments, Spartacus or Ben-Hur used to be on the TV practically every other Sunday so I don’t think I’d be allowed to even contemplate watching those again 😂

@nessisonett Yeah another reason that I'm wary about buying them, as I've seen them so many times over the years!

There is a channel I always watch on YouTube called Films at Home. It is just some dude with a beard talking about films, but he mainly talks about 4K blu ray releases and news, and clearly knows his stuff.

Anyway, whenever he does his top 10 lists for 4K blu rays , he often includes older films like the ones you mentioned over recent films as he prefers the moves filmed on 35mm.

You know, I don't think I've ever watched 2001: A Space Odyssey and Lawrence of Arabia all the way through. Now would be a good time to rectify that!

Top Gun: Maverick really is bloody good. We rented it through Apple TV in 4K for £5 which isn’t bad at all and the picture looked great. Some of the most breathtaking aerial footage I’ve seen in a movie and yeah, there’s a few corny bits as expected, but it’s worth it.

@nessisonett Thanks for the post, I'll probably watch it that way too. It's even cheaper over here.

@Voltan Hmm, I wonder what it is about the current state of the pound that would make it more expensive here 😉

@nessisonett The Polish Złoty isn't exactly in great shape either but I guess they just have regional pricing

@LN78 Oh man, that’s a great movie that I’ve only seen the once. It seems to be almost forgotten about and is rarely discussed for some reason considering how good it is.

@LN78 I’m ashamed to say that I’ve never actually seen The Exorcist, I’m not a big horror movie fan as I’m a total wuss! I’ve heard good things about that director’s cut of the 3rd one though, it seems to have been quite a few years in the making anyway.

Bought tickets to see Terrifier 2 with the family on Sunday. I love the ridiculous claims of people fainting, puking, etc. in the theater. We've become so desensitized to on-screen violence in recent decades that we just kind of shrug when ultra-violent movies release, so it feels like a fun throwback to see a teeny tiny horror movie (production budget was $250,000, lol) become a minor hit through word-of-mouth accounts of how shocking it apparently is.

Apparently it's decently more gruesome than the original, which is... hard to believe, given how nasty that got, but I suppose we'll see!

@LN78 You got claims like that periodically when new horror films would turn up the test the limits of what viewers could tolerate. A lot of it was marketing, but it tapped into a sort of transgressive fun that used to be associated with the genre.

I guess that's why one critic pointedly observed that "films like this just aren't made any more." The transgressive horror market was seized and subsequently run into the ground by the torture porn cinematic trend in the 2010s.

But it's pretty standard for horror most of the best films to be indies and/or low-budget. You have some notable exceptions, but it's usually the people working on shoestring budgets that reinvigorate the genre.

Art the Clown is also the only interesting new slasher villain to crop up... in a long time, if I'm being honest.

I've found a few films to be a bit much for me (A Serbian Film, Martyrs, Funny Games, and any exploitation film with real or simulated animal violence come to mind), but it's rarely about the explicitness of the actual on-screen violence for me. Terrifier 1 had one somewhat shocking death scene, so I'm curious to see how they top it.

Thanks for the recommendation. I'll add I Saw the Devil to my list.

@LN78 It's definitely a film designed to test the limits of what the audience is willing to put up with. And doesn't need to bombard the audience with cinematography and low frequency noises designed to make the audience feel sick like Gaspar Noé does in his films.

That being said, I'd never, ever watch it with everyone else.

@LN78 Did you not realize what you were getting into when you watched it?

@LN78 The film. From what I remember, there was a decent amount of buzz about its extreme content.

@Sable Some of Now You See Me was filmed in Greenwich. I think it was the first one but could be the second. If I remember correctly the magic circle is based in Greenwich Observatory for some reason and there's also scenes of street magic filmed in Greenwich Market.

There's quite a few films made around that area actually!