i don't know, i saw stallone on tv the other day with his trademark bandana ans silocone lips and i changed channel. it was too sad. like the sequel to the dirty dozen but even worse.

Why would any red blooded male NOT pay money to see Rambo?!

it's not 1980

Remember in PART II when he blew up a guy with a bomb-tipped arrow? That shocked me then. Seems so gentle after the last movie when he fucking liquifies a guy with a machine gun.

PS- I watched it only for the politics.

Not sure about the rest but First Blood is an excellent movie by any standards and may as well be from another series altogether. I like the rest but more as guilty pleasures. The first one still really stands up, though.

The original Rocky is pretty great but the rest were all about squeezing a progressively drying and shriveling teat until it turned to dust. Did you see Rocky Balboa? Embarrassing!

Speaking of red blooded males, Stallone now has silicone lips like Joan Rivers.



Respect=zero.

Rocky Balboa was great! It made for a nice ending in the series that V wasn't going to give.

Drive. Ryan Gosling was exceptionally cool in the movie as "the driver". Clearly a remake of The Driver.

THE GATEKEEPERS




just released on disc. interviews with former directors of shin bet (israel's internal security agency) who speak about the history of their organization and the occupation/colonization of palestinian lands. really excellent stuff. it will blow your mind.

I thought the first two Rockys were great and even though the third one's not brilliant, I'll always watch it whenever it's on TV.

I watched the first Expendables film this morning. It's good for what it is although more because of Jason Statham than for Stallone. In terms of action heroes, Statham's the man right now.

The last Rambo was excellent primal action.

The expendables 2 is real lame.

I've not seen Expendables 2 yet. I know it's meant to be awful but I won't be able to hold off watching it for too long.

rocky 1 was great and 2 was the sequel, okay

but rocky IV, what utter shit, i mean, preposterous


i'm still trying to watch the first transporter. you just reminded me to up it on my netflix quee.


i guess my prejudice against men with silicone lips (who aren't burn victims) kept me from some good fun. but no, seriously, every time i looked at his face i'd start laughing-- i can't get into a movie that way.

oh man the killin' the atrocities

the bad bad burmese tyrants

the way heads disintegrate when hit by the sniper rifle dang

yesterday in the news i was watching a report about peasants displaced by the government in burma. they have nowhere to go.

it was just like the grapes of wrath, but in 2013.

Love the Marx Bros. I dig the anarchy.

Just watched "only god forgives" on PPV with my lady. It was original, weird, disturbing and violent (though less than I anticipated considering the press). Fuck critics I thought it was great. Far from perfect but it revels in its sloppiness, all style and no Elia Kazan, yet I still walked away from it with some feeling. A peculiar film that I have no doubt will amass a "cult" following in the future.

Yeah, I really wanna see that. It's not out in the UK till August, though. Kristin Scott Thomas looks sexy as hell in the trailer.

I'm not crazy about Danny Boyle but I enjoyed this. Good soundtrack too.

I like the idea of Kristen Scott Thomas playing a vengeful psycho lady or whatever, but I thought Driver was the biggest most over hyped pile of style over substance crap I've seen in years.

i actually liked it quite a bit. it was a good "mood" piece. plus it wasn't supposed to be a sociological documentary about the criminal underground, but a genre crime movie, right? a sort of nep-noir. i don't get what substance is missing-- it has good characters and good plot on top of the good "style" (aesthetics?). i gave it a 4/5 i think.

i didn't see it after any hype/propaganda campaign so i didn't even know who this gos(s)lin(g) guy was, but ran upon it randomly on netflix. and then i though "wow, i like this."

maybe it all comes down to expectations. i was pleasantly surprised.

Style over substance is only an issue for me when the style side isn't up to scratch, and I don't think that's the case with Drive. Michael Mann is one of my favourite filmmakers ever and he's the godfather of that whole 'fuck depth, just look' approach that Refn obviously loves. I get the feeling he must've watched this scene on a loop when making Drive, as well as playing a fair bit of GTA: Vice City (both big plus points for me, influence-wise).

or maybe he's a fan of last year at marienbad!

heaven forbid

I watched DRIVE all wrong. I thought it was hilarious.

The first hour or so is so boring, the movie almost dares you to turn it off. Then the carnage begins, and it's so over-the-top I found myself laughing at its outrageousness.

Currently acquiring Only God Forgives. I wasn't that interested, but bad reviews tend to make want to see a movie.

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Okay, I didn't realize there were so many action fans.

There's an extended sequence in OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN where the baddies take over the White House. It should satisfy most sadists.


Also, did no one see BULLET TO THE HEAD? It seemed aware of its own stupidity, which made the stupidity easy to take.

I liked Bullet to the Head and there was a slight sense of self-mocking about it, which is weird because one of the problems I generally have with Stallone as an action hero is his overall lack of any sense of humour. It's not that there aren't jokes in his films, he's just so terrible at delivering them, especially compared with Arnie.

Will definitely check out Olympus has Fallen. The trailer looks fantastic! I wanna see White House Down, too.

Face to Face

Excellent Spaghetti Western that's far better than the poster suggests.

6.5/10

Much better acting from Dakota Fanning than Kristen Stewart.

well, of course kristen stewart can't act for shit. her fame is all about the freckles. i liked the movie-- not that it was good, but nice piece of 70s hagiography. and their manager, what a dick! plus there were some interviews after.

i watched the original DJANGO.



great stuff! loved the terrible pinkish color of the stage blood-- looked like it was mixed with antifreeze! and of course dubbed. awesome. no, really good, i'm not making fun, and it's not that i see it for camp value-- it was campy maybe 40 years ago but today it's pure genius. kinda like seijun suzuki.

This was a great Belgian movie.

28 Days Later

Half of me wants to see that but is it really depressing? I can't seem to handle really downer/bleak movies anymore.


Haha. Classic. But am I the only one who thinks that despite its relentless action it's a reeeaaally slow movie, overall? It's years since I saw it though. I should probably watch it again.

"Bullhead" is not the most uplifting movie, that's for sure haha. I'd say, yes its a downer. I still think its great.

Haha. Thanks. I'd heard it's excellent but I seem to really struggle with downer movies right now.

holy mother of fuck. try watching "a separation" one of these days. UNFUCKINGBEARABLE! yes, yes, it won many awards, but when i watch i just wanna kill everyone in it and the guy who made it. as close to living in iran as i can imagine-- and that-- i just don't wanna fucking do that, i don't came how many golden palms/bears/whatever trophies that shit has won. my life is not long enough to spend the 2, 3 hours that it takes to watch it (i watched half and it felt like FOREVER).

speaking of long slow movies, about to watch (i think) antonioni's "red desert".

The Red Desert is definitely slow but it's not bleak in the way that I assumed Bullhead to be. I don't mind the more existential(?) bleakness that I associate with the likes of Antonioni but I really can't handle extreme violence anymore, at least in any kind of realistic way. I'll happily watch a John Woo movie or a series like Miami Vice or anything highly stylised like that, but when it starts to feel overtly 'real', I can't seem to handle it anymore. I watched Walter Hill's Last Man Standing the other night, which has to be about as violent as a Hollywood movie could be, but it's so stylised that it didn't bother me at all. I loved it in fact.

For years those more bleak/visceral movies were the very kind that I gravitated towards but they now just leave me a bit too depressed. Same with literature. I tried to reread Last Exit to Brooklyn recently (for years one of my very fave novels) but I couldn't seem to get past more than a few pages of it. I could handle Blood Meridian, though, just because it was so extreme and so alien from anything I could possibly experience or relate to that it didn't really bother me.

As my fav book of all time this bothers me. Yeah it's bleak...but...but it's so good! If you want bleak (or not) then try The Room by him.