davyK wrote:

Didn't know Rise was the 2nd modern one.

Drag Me To Hell was quite Evil Deady as well.

Plus, the floaty possessed guy with facial prosthetics was a total Deadite.

Rocky II is great.

Bull Brit low-rent crime revenge story from 2021. It just happens to be brilliant. With a superb atmosphere, it looks far classier than the usual British effort and Neil Maskell is simply brilliant in the lead, embuing a real feel of menace. Doesn't pull its punches. It's actually savage and - makes OldBoy , Get Carter and Taken look tame.

Recommended. On Netflix.  This is in the running for my film of the year.

davyK wrote:

Bull Brit low-rent crime revenge story from 2021. It just happens to be brilliant. With a superb atmosphere, it looks far classier than the usual British effort and Neil Maskell is simply brilliant in the lead, embuing a real feel of menace. Doesn't pull its punches. It's actually savage and - makes OldBoy , Get Carter and Taken look tame.

Recommended. On Netflix.  This is in the running for my film of the year.

Spoiler:

This could actually be considered a Brit criminal version of High Plains Drifter

That's getting watched

My men.

Dark Soldier wrote:

My men.

I think Fede Alvarez is a great director. Rewatched Don't Breathe recently and it's so we'll put together. I think they got lucky that the "guy who made a cool YouTube short film about a robot attack" could actually make good films when they plonked him onto a big franchise.

I'm excited for his Alien film.

The Painted Bird Heavyweight, lengthy film telling the tale (from a novel) of a Jewish boy separated from his parents pirates in WW2 Eastern Europe.

It's almost Dickensian-road-story territory this with an episodic structure and therefore many characters and a large cast (including small turns by Skarsgard, Keitel and the guy who starred in Come and See as a lad). This is not an easy watch - it's a superb, powerful film with many challenging scenes right from the off. It clocks in at just under 3hrs but the pace never really lets up. The bleakness is relentless.

It's beautifully shot in b&w and the grim pastoral existence in that part of the world at that time is conveyed unflinchingly. Definitely worth a watch for those looking for an absorbing and rewarding challenge.  On BFI.

hylian_elf wrote:

60s Manchurian pisses over remake from a great height. Davy, never and I mean NEVER watch a remake first. Golden rule.

I know - not sure why I did it - I suppose the draw of Washington did it. 

But orthodox pirates.

37. After Life - 24 Sep
Continuing my foray into the works of Hirokazu Kore-eda. Shot as a mixture of real interviews with people about the best/favourite memory (caught on 16mm canera) and fictional narrative, Kore-eda tells a story about life after death where you get to choose one memory to relive forever in your afterlife, exploring the nature of human memories. This guy is a genius.
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38. Infernal Affairs - 1 Oct
For my birthday, I wanted to rewatch a favourite film of mine. Most were too long for the time I had, so I chose this classic that I recently picked up on Criterion. Hong Kong cat and mouse thriller with tense scenes, moral ambiguity, and inner turmoil with identity crisis (reflecting the mood of Hong Kong after independence from the UK). Topped off with a little melancholic melodrama.
Scorsese's The Departed has nothing on this, although I am probably overdue a rewatch, yet the man won a Best Director Oscar for that and not his other films.
[9]

Absolutely no way. The Departed has Jack Nicholson in it ffs

The Departed is a lot better.

Will have to give it a watch.

Oh and belated birthday wishes to Elf!

infernal kept reminding me of John Woos hard boiled im not sure why, maybe the undercover cop
in the crime organisation story line