Topic: The Movie Thread

Today's movie was Viking Wolf. If you are lukewarm on werewolves or just don't care, there ain't much for you here but if you are a werewolf fan, I thought this was actually better than it had any right to be. The werewolf is very much just a wolf, rather than a big man wolf thing, but the CG they use to capture the wolf is surprisingly solid, and allows them to do things you can't do with a rubber suit (like there is so much emotion the werewolf is able to convey with facial expressions for example). I liked it.

I watched The Founder last night, for no other reason than it's about to leave Prime. I'm a big fan of Keaton (not to mention Offerman) so I was always going to enjoy it.

I don't want to go into spoiler territory but it was interesting to watch what initially felt like a typical feel good story, where you think you're supposed to be rooting for the regular Joe, only to start wondering whether he's all that great.

Worth pointing out I had no idea about the true story before I watched.

Back from an advance screening of Anora, which was I think also being shown at the same time at the festival so it’s sort of a simulcast situation. One hell of a good movie, possibly the best I’ve seen all year. Fully expect nominations come award season.

To anyone looking for a small, endearing movie, I recommend "the ties that bind us" (l'attachement) with Valeria Bruni Tedeschi and Pio Marmäi: it's about human affection that isn't necessarily love in, or at least what we expect love to be - I found it refreshingly realistic and insightful. Definitely a conversation starter.

@nessisonett yeah, it's truly great, one of my favorite of this season with The Brutalist.

Ahh, watched the Fargo blu ray tonight, an all time favourite of many, many Coen Brothers' movies. And on a whim I've decided maybe I should embrace physical media again and get a small, select blu ray steelbook collection going.

Any recommendations of some nice special editions, steelbooks of some worthy movies? Or just some top quality 4K stuff.

@Nei Haven’t seen The Brutalist, not sure my bladder could take that length of movie! I still have horrible flashbacks to Interstellar 😂

@nessisonett Hahahah, but did Anne Hathaway overact your need to reach for the toilet in your mind?
Anyway, you are in luck as there's an interesting diegetic intermission wanted by director Brady Corbet. There is an interval halfway through the film, which is integrated into the film so it doesn’t interrupt the screening: for fifteen minutes, there is a countdown indicating the start of the second act, along with background music.

@Ravix Step into my office! 😂

Amazon currently have a 2 for £30 for 4K Blu Rays in the UK. Think I'm going to gor for Event Horizon and Deepwater Horizon.

As for reccomendations, here you go!

Alien
Black Hawk Down
The Thing
The Fugitive
District 9
Predator
Stand By Me
Universal Soldier
The Untouchables

As for steelbooks, I aint got any 4K's as yet but I've got my eye on Trainspotting, The Lord of The Rings Trilogy, Enter the Dragon and The Hurt Locker.

@JohnnyShoulder just seen a few versions of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, not exactly sure the differences, one comes out next March, but then there was a very similar collection that's out in December and actually includes the one ring collectible and has all 4k theatrical and extended editions as well, so not sure what the March one is for, just a different box and no collectible.

It's been a while since I've seen LotR and this seems rather tempting 😅

Moon is in that deal you mentioned too, if you need to add any. That would surely boost any collection's merit.

I'm thinking a couple of Bladerunners would be a good start, I noticed they had an edition that came with a whisky glass. But that is not available 😪

I think your office was a trap and I may have started down the rabbit hole 😂

@Nei Brilliant, I do love an interval. Gives it more of a stage play feel too and separates the movie into distinct acts.

@Ravix I think it more of a spider's web lol.

For LOTR triology it is the steelbook edition which is out next March. I will probably end never buying it. 😂 I did have the extended version box set on DVD which i tried to watch every chrimbo, but I've not seen them in yonks.

I'm going to check what deals they have in my local HMV store this week before taking the plunge on the Amazon sale.

@JohnnyShoulder well this one

is out just in time for Christmas, so there's really no excuse not to get the upgrade

🕸🕷 perhaps the Spider has caught itself 😉

I was shocked there is no 4K version of The Hateful Eight available anywhere. Is there any reason some movies just don't bother with 4k releases?

Mini continuation of Stephen King thought from TV thread. Why the heck is Misery only available as a 4K in the USA 😪 Misery is genuinely superb. Everyone should watch Misery this winter.

@Ravix It is this one, with all the shiny steelbooks. 😁

It is is annoying some films are only available in some regions. Hereditary and The Silence of the Lambs are ones that spring to mind that are not available in the UK. 😕 I think is is mostly down to cost and distribution. And then there is The Abyss which is cos the BBFC wanted a cut a scene involving a rat, and James Cameron's crew said 'Nope'.

Today's watch was Hell House LLC, Standard not Directors. I actually like found footage, and this is probably some of the better found footage I've seen, but it has such an anti climax of an ending it is hard not to feel really sour about it.

@Ravix @JohnnyShoulder I read from multiple places and seen a few videos that the 4K transfer of LoTR trilogy was not done well. Could either of you confirm whether or not this is true? I love the original trilogy and was bummed when I found out. Definitely want to get it but if it's not worth it, my bluray edition should be fine.

@Hogs-of-War-General I've heard similar things too. I've not seen them since the dvd days, so am unable to confirm from first hand experience.

@JohnnyShoulder @Hogs-of-War-General While not a "Terminator 2" style DNR disaster, the "LotR" 4K transfers have undergone some digital "reimaging" (colour grading, artificial sharpening etc.) to bring them more in line with the later "Hobbit" trilogy. God only knows why. The results are (to my eye) better than the weirdly green shifted extended blu-ray release but the most "authentic" looking versions are still the theatrical cuts that were initially released on blu-ray way back in the day, so pick your poison. I will add that the Atmos sound mixes on the 4K discs are incredible - demo worthy in fact - and worth the price of the upgrade if you have suitable gear.

1917 (4K UHD Blu-Ray) - It's been a few years since I last watched this (first time on 4K disc though), and it's still as fantastic as I remembered. Wonderful set design and the "single take" gimmick do an incredible job immersing you into the horrors of WWI, and it had just been long enough since my last watch that I couldn't remember if/when either of the two core characters died, so the journey was just as tense as it was the first time around.

Dune (Blu-Ray) - The 80's version. I really wasn't feeling this one. I think it certainly had big ambitions with some really memorable & trippy visual sequences, and many set pieces felt "big", but I think it's just too much book to fit into one movie (IIRC, it's not quite as long as even the first movie of the modern duology), with the last 3rd of the film really moving along at a breakneck pace (with Chani being nothing more narratively than some random Fremen girl Paul loves). There are some other oddities as well, such as the fact that they largely abandon the personal shield generators after their introduction (envisioned here as a bunch of polygons that surround the wearer, making them look like vaguely human shaped polygons, which while sort of impressive how they brought it to life, looks silly), and they spend largely the rest of the movie shooting each other (including with some sort of sound guns, which may be more accurate to the books AFAIK, but again look silly in practice). It certainly doesn't help that the Harkonnen come across as merely generally gross rather than truly intimidating, and a lot of the tech & ship designs personally didn't land with me, often times coming across as lame or plain ugly.

Jonah Hex (Blu-Ray) - More westerns need horse mounted Gatling Guns. I'm admittedly not too familiar with the comics it's based on, but on it's own it's a serviceable enough & sometimes fun post Civil War actioneer with a supernatural twist, if nothing remarkable. It feels 10-20 minutes shorter than it should though (they never explain how those special cannon balls are supposed to work, which is a pretty big deal since the bad guy's plan hinges entirely on them. That, and Jonah was clearly supposed to find himself in that fighting pit against that weird snake guy they set up, and then it just doesn't happen), which doesn't make much sense as it's pretty brisk at just under an hour and a half & it could have easily used the extra time.

Kite (Blu-Ray) - Ultraviolent & taboo 90's anime OVA that I think even surpasses Ninja Scroll & Wicked City in terms of how far it pushes the envelope. Sawa is a teen assassin who kills the absolute dregs of society, but the corruption runs deep as her handlers (a pair of police detectives) are just as twisted as those they order her to take out. The new Discotek Blu-Ray includes three different cuts (all remastered), including two different earlier western releases which cut back on the most taboo content (to various degrees) and condense it to "film" format, plus the completely uncut version (a two episode OVA) how it originally released in Japan. It's definitely not for the faint of heart or those who (understandably) shy away from some very questionable content, but it had a very grungy vibe (not unlike Perfect Blue), which I really dug.

Toy Story (Blu-Ray) - Time to wash the above away with something much more wholesome. I don't think I've actually watched this in it's entirety since I was a kid, but it's still a really fun watch that provides a good amount of laughs. Visually it's starting to look really simple, but I really dug the neon lit interiors of Pizza Planet & some of the glow in the dark elements of Sid's room. I liked noticing some things I missed out on as a kid, such as the Binford tool box (a Home Improvement reference), and the "Whack-A-Alien" game at Pizza Planet that features knock off chest bursters popping out of a bloody Astronaut corpse (this probably wouldn't pass the test in a modern Disney cartoon, lol, though I don't think they completely owned Pixar at this point).

@Hogs-of-War-General @JohnnyShoulder @LN78

Interesting. I was looking in to getting them, so had no first hand experience, although maybe I do remember it being said at some point that there were issues.

Funny you mentioned the Hobbit, as I put that on Amazon last night just to see how it was on there, and the first thing I noticed was it just looked s*** in it's production style 😅 so now I'm a little worried if they made the 4K LotR look even remotely like the Hobbit tbh.

Audio though, could still be a good reason to go for it, as I was looking at these versions for the sound quality too, tbh. But getting a £90 version for them to look a bit s*** would still sting 😪

@LN78 I can't stand when they drastically change a films color grading and overall look of a film. I'm one of the few that actually really enjoys the Hobbit trilogy however they should not change the original's overall look to match it.

Atmos makes a huge difference! I completely agree with you however I wouldn't to throwdown that much money for an audio upgrade. Maybe on a heavy discount, maybe...