#watch everything

[kivrin]

what I think is probably an entirely uncontroversial reaction to the final episode of Home Fires

RIGHT ON, PAT!

RIGHT.

ON.

(also, roll THAT in a cigarette and smoke it, Bob, you vicious creep.)

[secondtimcaround-blog]

x

[randyissnek]

A 'new' Elimination Chamber? Huh.

[iwanrj]

Watch Everything, All The Time: Yeskamo Wireless CCTV Floodlight Camera System Review

http://www.iwanrj.com/2019/05/watch-everything-all-time-yeskamo.html

[functional-at-best]

Isabelle Hyde

I think Jesus and music are important. Send me something if you'd like: Isabelle Hyde PO Box 2021 Lindale, TX 75771

Oh my gosh you guys have to check out Isabelle Hyde and her band. I was looking for uke chords for Kitchen Sink and she has such a beautiful cover of it (and plenty other songs) and it's been 3 hours and I'm obsessed

[olliefilm]

Just Added to Netflix - 23/10/16

Carlos (18, 158 mins)

 Olivier Assayas’ Carlos is a five and a half hour miniseries charting the life of Venezuelan terrorist Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, or better known as Carlos The Jackal. What you’ve got on Netflix is the condensed feature, which clocks in at just over two and a half hours. Naturally, I think you’ll be more rewarded to seek out the full version, but Carlos is still compulsive in its concise version. At the center of the film is a controlled and unruffled performance by Édgar Ramírez as the titular character: iconic but never flamboyant. The OPEC hostage takeover is a brilliantly re-enacted centerpiece to the whole saga, but Carlos is mostly about how terrorism thrives on political and diplomatic alliances.

 4/5

  Raman Raghav 2.0 (15, 138 mins)

 Raman Raghav 2.0 is like Manhunter but little of the tact, but just as stylistically loud. I half expected “Strong As I Am” to blast through the speakers. Although the film opens with caption as to who Raman Raghav was – he was a serial killer who confessed to have killed 41 people in the late 60s – it swifts that aside to loosely come up with a blustering psychological thriller. Raman is a vagrant who wonders around Mumbai killing victims with a steel rod, and Raghav is the shades-wearing haywire cop who snorts coke and gets his rocks off with random women in front of his wife. In the end, the message is the all-too-familiar ‘we’re on opposite sides of the same coin’. Nawazuddin Siddiqui is fun to watch as Raman, but the film isn’t as shrewd with Raghav.

 3/5

  Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging (12A, 100 mins)

 Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging is a good-natured tween comedy about a 14 year-old girl having to deal with, well, what most girls have to deal with in Southern England. With bohemian parents, floppy haired boys and girls not being too far away from their sexual awakening, I would place the film as being just about CBBC-friendly. Georgia Groome (who was so good in London to Brighton) perfectly fits into the lead role and she manages to balance the quirkiness of her peers with a little level-headedness. As light as a fluffy notebook this film is, I commend Angus, Thong and Perfect Snogging for illustrating some of the confusion and upset girls that age have to deal with.

 3/5

  Mascots (15, 89 mins)

 If you’ve seen Christopher Guest’s Best in Show, then you’ve seen his latest, Mascots. Here, he relies on the same format and familiar tropes. A bunch of mascots are congregating to compete for the Golden Fluffy Award as the film fictionally interviews its (urgh) kooky subjects. The stalwarts of Guest’s troupe are doing the same thing: Parker Posey is the lively free spirit, Fred Willard is the geriatric dope, Jennifer Coolidge is the imposing sugar daddy against Bob Balaban’s meek academic, and Christopher Guest gives himself a baffling role as a flamboyant artist. The problem is in a time where television already hit its prime with the comedic faux-documentary format, Mascots has a bit to catch up. TV comedy has overtaken what got it inspired in the first place.

 2/5

  Against All Odds (18, 128 mins)

 Against All Odds is in desperate need of a single genre, and when it frantically finds one it’s hard to take seriously. Jeff Bridges plays a recently let go football player, who is tasked in bringing back the girlfriend of a mobster. The gist is that Against All Odds is a remake of Tourneur’s Out of The Past, but with steamy lovemaking in ancient ruins, a dick-swinging car chase down Sunset Boulevard, and James Woods. When the film is in LA, part of me thinks Brian De Palma would have had a great crack at this. However, the rest is as implicit as a garish 80s love ballad. It has its moments though.

 3/5

[olliefilm]

Just Added to Netflix - 16/10/16

The Witness (N/A, 89 mins)

 In 1964, Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death outside her apartment complex in the Kew Gardens suburb of Queen’s, New York. The Witness is a documentary which follows her brother Bill Genovese, re-examining her death, the lasting impact it had in New York, and vitally why almost no one came to her aid while she was screaming. The murder of Kitty Genovese is seen an infamous case of collective apathy, which was covered in a disputed story by the New York Times: 37 Who Saw the Murder and Didn’t Call Police. The Witness has an interesting central figure in Bill, who is fixed on interviewing the inhabitants who occupied the apartment at the time, and confronting the killer Winston Moseley. For someone like Bill to be as determined as he is, there is an air of frustration toward the end, in which the case turns cold. Nonetheless, The Witness is a chilling and complex account.

 4/5

  Dracula Untold (15, 92 mins)

 If Universal is set on profiting from rebooting its Monsters Universe, it has got itself a monster of a task ahead. Dracula Untold is humdrum cinema. Firstly, Luke Evans’ incarnation of Dracula is like watching a man who realised he forgot to put the cover on his motorcycle when it started to rain. Secondly, the pacing trudges and squelches through green screen backdrops and glum exposition. Thirdly, the 300 visual filter is grossly outdated. Lastly, it needs to be more overblown. More like what Coppola went for in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. You haven’t got a terrible movie Universal; you’ve got a soulless one.

 2/5

  Boys Don’t Cry (18, 118 mins)

 At the 1999 Academy Awards, two films had strong contrasting evocations of America. One was American Beauty, which reaped the spoils that night with its sort of tacky liberal-ish view of middle upper class suburbia. The other was Boys Don’t Cry, which was notable for Hilary Swank’s Best Actress win (and it was a richly deserved). The film is based on the harrowing true story of trans-man Brandon Teena, who was raped and murdered by her peers in an apparent hate crime back in 1993. Boys Don’t Cry has a strongly lower class, rural America backdrop. This is underscored by trance-like expositional images of electricity pylons, water towers and plants in the middle of the Nebraska plain. Director Kimberley Pierce found a way to present a harrowing American tragedy, yet she also presented a film about hope and euphoria in the tiniest of moments. All involved deserved more plaudits that year.

 5/5

  The Hoax (15, 116 mins)

 The Hoax has Richard Gere on top form as Clifford Irving, a failed publisher who decides to commit a grievous fraud by claiming that Howard Hughes has authorised him to write the autobiography. The beauty of it being that Hughes is a recluse and rarely communicates with the outside world. As with many glorious hoaxes, Clifford narrowly dodges exposure with every little scrap of information he tries to obtain. At certain points in the movie, it plays out like a compelling heist with two bumbling crooks. Plaudits must go to Alfred Molina as his accomplice, sweating and being a klutz when it comes to composure. The film’s wobbly tonal shifts and Julie Delpy’s perfunctory role aside, it is probably the best work Lasse Hallström has done since My Life As A Dog.

 4/5

  Ong-Bak 3 (18, 99 mins)

 Ong-Bak 3 follows on after Tien (Tony Jaa) is captured and brutally beaten to within an inch of his life by Lord Rajasena. He is released by a mysterious crow-like figure, Bhuti, whose motive is to overthrow the Lord by placing a curse on him. Most of the movie is taken up with Buddish philosophy and healing, plus an overabundance of flashbacks. Ong-Bak 3 feels more like a purely commercial way to round the series up to a trilogy. There should be more action rather than dwelling upon the rehabilitation. Finally, the elephants arrive in the last 20 minutes but Ong-Bak 3 is a tad unexciting compared to its two predecessors.

 2/5

  Sky Ladder: The Art of Cai Guo-Qiang (N/A, 76 mins)

 With plenty of great documentaries coming in and out of Netflix (The 13th, The Witness, Queen Mimi, The White Helmets), you could probably forgive Sky Ladder: The Art of Cai Guo-Qiang for being serviceable. Cai Guo-Qiang is a Chinese-born artist who is known for producing meaningful pyrotechnic displays. Touching the Void director Kevin McDonald charts his ambition to create a ladder half a kilometre tall consisting of fireworks. In the end, we see his forth attempt – his first was cancelled due to rain (it was in Bath!). I found myself most interested in how an artist has to work within China’s cultural boundaries.

 3/5