What was the last film you watched?

[Mel O'Drama]

Stand By Me (1986)

Back when it was in cinemas, this film was given glowing reviews by school peers, and I remember finding the poster appealing on the basis that the lead actors weren't far off my own age. Somehow, though, it's taken another thirty nine years for me to get round to watching.

I suppose today it has the double whammy of nostalgia: a very Eighties film which offers a slice of the late Fifties. I suppose "magical and evocative" (from the quad poster quotes) sums it up.

River Phoenix aside, I had either forgotten or not known who else appeared in this film, so it was a surprise to see Richard Dreyfuss appear in the opening scene. Even though I don't think he looks like an older Will Wheaton (I'd have believed him more as an older version of any of the other three) he made a good narrator. Wheaton himself was great in his part, and I especially enjoyed the energy between he and Phoenix, since both are extremely deep. It's only this morning that I realised Jerry O'Connell played Vern. I mainly know him from work he was doing a decade or so after this (like Syd's boyfriend from Scream 2) and this is worlds apart from that. There was also the mother from Gremlins who was also Lea Thompson's mother from Back To The Future. Meanwhile, Corey Feldman and Kiefer Sutherland feel like the two inevitables of youth-orientated films of this era.

Probably the nicest surprise for me was John Cusack cropping up in a small role - a couple of flashbacks within the flashback - playing Wheaton/Drefuss's late brother.

Something that makes this film stand out is that it's shot entirely on location. And 90% + of that location work is outdoors. There's a lot of warm light creating an inviting sense of idyll.

While I knew this was a "coming-of-age" film, I didn't have any idea of the premise beyond that, but I suppose I'd half-expected to follow this friendship group over the course of a lengthy period of time - months or years - so I was pleasantly surprised the fact that the main part of the film (the part told in flashback) took place over just a couple of days. I felt this kept it nice and simple and and captured a moment in time.

Despite the whole film being about a journey to see a dead body, I can't help feeling it would have been more psychologically impactive had we not seen the body.​

 

[Mel O'Drama]

Letter To Brezhnev (1985)

​

Letter to Brezhnev (1985): this is one of those great “Thatcher’s Britain” films that captured working class life at the time. It reviewed well when it premiered and was a staple of Channel 4 (who funded the film) in the 80’s/90’s but it rarely gets a mention these days and I can’t recall the last time I saw it on TV.​

Letter hasn’t (to my knowledge) been seen on TV in years, never mind a streaming service.​

Happily it's now on iPlayer, so I've been able to watch it for the very first time.

Quite honestly, the main reason for watching this film was that its name has come up a number of times in the Brookside thread. When it comes recommended by Carrie, James and Ome, it was inevitable.

There are lots of familiar names and faces attached to this project. It's written by one of Brookside's original writers Frank Clarke, brother of Margi who plays Teresa. He gives some sharp, funny and unforgettably human dialogue. Meanwhile, original Brookie cast member Alexandra Pigg plays Elaine. For much of her time in Brookie, as much as I was compelled by her character's arc, I was unsure of her performance. Seeing her playing a different character, who has more attitude and confidence. things have clicked into place for me. Either she grew dramatically in the years between the two projects, or I underestimated her to begin with. Either way, this is a terrific and memorable performance, and she's quite magnetic here. Just this morning I read that she'd dated Peter Firth, who plays the object of her affection Peter, shortly after this. They met again when doing an interview about the film in 2010 and were married by 2017. Perhaps there's something truly magical about this one. Alfred Molina is always reliable and a whizz with accents as he proves here all over again. He barely speaks a word of English, but speaks volumes with every look.

Connections aside, it stands on its own merits as a little slice of British life in the mid-Eighties. I think I was expecting something grim, grey, gritty and uncompromising. There were certainly elements of this, and the film is very honest in way characters speak and think, but the biggest surprise for me was the romantic tone of the film. Not just the almost idealistic outlook of the protagonist in falling for the romantic image of her one-night stand, but also in the way it is shot. Even though we see its seedier underbelly during the wild night out, Liverpool looks inviting and, yes, romantic. One of my favourite shots in the film is the aerial view of the exit from the Shaftesbury Hotel (now, sadly, no longer in existence) and pans to show the adjoining Roscoe Gardens looking poetically autumnal.

It's this juxtaposition between romance and reality that makes this feels so very special. That scene captures the feeling of feeling happy and content, while still reflecting the sometimes mundane, sometimes harsh realities of the world continuing as it did before.

The soundtrack helps as well. The score is unexpectedly whimsical (though not nauseatingly so. It all feels very right-sized and appropriate), and there are some cracking Eighties tracks I'd all but forgotten. I missed out on clubbing in the Eighties, but the nightclub scenes feel almost documentary-like in capturing a very specific vibe. Nothing feels fake, staged or rehearsed. It's like they just turned the cameras on what was already happening and nobody noticed.

Naturally, the austerity so prevalent in the North of England in the Eighties is still felt here. Elaine is jobless, and appears resigned to it, while her friend Teresa works in a slaughterhouse, gutting chickens (mercifully, the cameras spare us following her into her job). But seeing them living on their wits is a joy. Teresa steals various chicken parts from work to feed her family and friends. At bars and nightclubs, she'll take drinks from others' tables when they're distracted, then she and Elaine sit looking as though they've been there for hours. Elaine dances with an old letch in a nightclub, deftly taking his wallet from his pocket and the two leg it. They're almost caught, but add insult to injury by stealing the man's Mercedes. It's the profits of this with which they pay for their hotel rooms. And in between this comes them enjoying the simple pleasure of a post-clubbing visit to the chippy.

 

[Mel O'Drama]

Shutter Island (2010)

This was one of three previously-unwatched films hurriedly added to my watchlist last night. Shutter Island would probably have been my second or third choice, but for the fact that it's the only one with a "Leaving Prime in X days" warning. So in I dived with minimal knowledge of the film. All I knew was that it starred Leonardo DiCaprio and the premise was about two men sent to find a missing psychiatric patient who was missing. This was the best place to start.

It took some time for me to understand what the voice of the film would be. It felt surprising that some way into the film it wasn't clear into which genre it fell, nor where it was trying to take us. It seemed almost sluggish and, fearing it was going to feel this way for 2+ hours, I briefly wondered about stopping watching (I must confess to also being a little bothered that DiCaprio repeatedly mispronounced the word "escaped" as "excaped"). Somehow, though, I couldn't check out. Partly because I'd invested time in it and it was too late in the evening to watch another. But partly because I needed to find out where it was going. I'm very glad I persevered.

Because most of the people on the island were either orderlies in white, patients in hospital clothes or psychiatrists in suite, it also took me a while to fully realise this was a period piece rather than just heavily stylised. Not everyone can pull off a Fedora, but DiCaprio just about got away with it whilst Mark Ruffalo looked illegally good in his (I've never previously thought of him as a particularly attractive man, but that hat paired with an amused smirk upon arrival at the island and meeting its various inhabitants tipped the balance).

To say much about the film would be ruinous to anyone who hasn't yet watched it, and I'd hate to deprive someone else of the opportunity to see it unspoilt. I can say that the performances are terrific, the film kept me guessing with each shift. And it messed with my head a fair bit (but I'm too polite to write down the actual term I used to describe it after watching).​

 

[James from London]

It's taken me years and years, but I finally got around to watching No Down Payment (1957), the "trashy" counterpart to the more "arty" Scenes from a Marriage (1974) which, we have been led to believe, were combined to form the basis of Knots Landing. (MIchael Filerman: "David wanted to make art, I wanted to make trash and together we made television.")

Two major revelations: NDP is genuinely great in its own right, and its influence on Knots feels almost blatant at times. There are a couple of backyard get-togethers in the movie that strongly foreshadow the one in the pilot welcoming Gary and Val to the neighbourhood, and the more boozy one in Season 2 where Richard openly flirts with Abby.

Tony Randall simply is Richard Avery (even if he's the one selling cars in this instance). In fact, everyone in the movie shares some of Richard's anxiety about their social and economic status. Barbara Flamingo Road Rush is Karen Fairgate with added religion married to Pat Batman Hingle who shares Sid's fundamental decency and kindness, while Joanne Woodward is especially good as a kinda-sorta Val, again from Tennessee, but as if Danny Waleska were the childhood sweetheart that she'd moved to the Californian suburbs with after a rocky start at married life.

 

[Willie Oleson]

THE COLLECTOR (1965)



It's been in my to-watch list since the day @Richard Channing mentioned this film in this very thread, several (many?) years ago.
Alas, the film was impossible to find, but after Terence Stamp's passing I figured it was time for another search patrol. No digging needed, surprisingly, because the internet instantly referred to an (old?) forum conversation in which someone provided the link to the film on InternetArchive (where they also had the Flamingo Road episodes).
I'd like to think that the ghost of Mr. Stamp had a helping hand in the matter, but regardless, it was worth the wait.
And now that I've sort of figured out what my favourite 1960s movies are, perhaps this was THE perfect time to watch it because it proved, once again, that some of the best stuff still needs to be watched.

The film looks gorgeous (and the actors too, of course) but this was almost the standard in 1960s coloured cinema.
The score is beautiful and pitch-perfect narrative wise because it never reveals too much.
Initially, the "collecting" thing gave me House Of Wax vibes but thankfully it covers more ground than that.
There's that one kidnap trope of almost-being-rescued when a chatty neighbour (a Colonel, of course, it's a British film) invites Freddy for something-something. I don't remember the details.
It's a very tense scene and at some point I thought Freddy would pull a Norman Bates because the situation was about to become quite suspicious.

It's become a bit of a cliché to mention class division in British drama but that also happens to be part of this story. This might be the only flaw in Freddy's autistically precise thinking pattern: even if she actually fell in love with him they'd still not be on the same level, as it were.
Miranda Grey's faith is sadistically tragic and Freddy's journey continues on an almost darkly comical and upbeat note, bringing it back to that sinister House Of Wax theme.
There are no massive plot twists to speak of and yet I felt my perspective was constantly challenged. Sometimes confusing, but in the best way possible.
A new favourite added to the precious list which means that a DVD has to be found, come hell or high water.

 

[James from London]

THE COLLECTOR (1965)

View attachment 57020

Yes, I loved it when I watched it too, also thanks to @Richard Channing:

A BIG thank you to Richard for making me aware of this one! I loved it. I wasn't expecting much more than a slice of '60s horror exploitation, which I'd have been happy with, but this was much more substantial than that.

Interesting that it was made in 1965, the same year as The Ipcress File. The few glimpses of '60s London we get here -- pretty, leafy Hampstead -- are a bit swingier than the rainy, overcast Whitehall of Ipcress, but there is one scene set in Trafalgar Square. It's funny to think of Terence Stamp’s real-life flatmate at the time, Harry Palmer, shuffling papers just up the road while Stamp drives past with the original Maggie Gioberti in the boot of his car.

Like Karen Mackenzie, Samantha Eggar wakes to find herself locked in a cellar with a wardrobe full of clothes in her size -- only her captor isn't a shlub like Phil Harbert, but the Adonis-like Stamp. Casting him as a meek little weirdo seems very strange at first, but it kind of contributes to the off-kilter oddness of the whole film. And his performance is so brilliantly awkward and tortured that after a while you just buy it. (Oh and there's also a bathroom scene that is reminiscent of Krystle and Joel Abrigore's on DYNASTY, whilst being somehow both kinkier and more chaste.)

Stamp's character is like an English working class Norman Bates, a sexually repressed man-child who surrounds himself with dead butterflies rather than stuffed birds. Like Janet Leigh in Psycho, the target of his obsession is a liberated young "woman of today", whom he feels threatened by as well as attracted to. There's also an element of 1967's Bonnie and Clyde to their dynamic: Warren Beatty's impotent Clyde to Faye Dunaway's more worldly Bonnie.

In part, Stamp seems to represent the confusion and resentment of those who felt excluded from the '60s social and sexual revolution. His angry rant about not being able to understand Picasso or Catcher in the Rye is brilliant and weirdly moving.

And the print (or digital equivalent thereof) on Netflix is tip-top. The colours really pop!

 

[Toni]

It's taken me years and years, but I finally got around to watching No Down Payment (1957), the "trashy" counterpart to the more "arty" Scenes from a Marriage (1974) which, we have been led to believe, were combined to form the basis of Knots Landing. (MIchael Filerman: "David wanted to make art, I wanted to make trash and together we made television.")

Two major revelations: NDP is genuinely great in its own right, and its influence on Knots feels almost blatant at times. There are a couple of backyard get-togethers in the movie that strongly foreshadow the one in the pilot welcoming Gary and Val to the neighbourhood, and the more boozy one in Season 2 where Richard openly flirts with Abby.

Tony Randall simply is Richard Avery (even if he's the one selling cars in this instance). In fact, everyone in the movie shares some of Richard's anxiety about their social and economic status. Barbara Flamingo Road Rush is Karen Fairgate with added religion married to Pat Batman Hingle who shares Sid's fundamental decency and kindness, while Joanne Woodward is especially good as a kinda-sorta Val, again from Tennessee, but if Danny Waleska were the childhood sweetheart that she'd moved to the Californian suburbs with after a rocky start at married life.

Agree 1000%>

 

[Willie Oleson]

I can't quote from your own quote therefore I needed to improvise.

JFL: Casting him as a meek little weirdo seems very strange at first, but it kind of contributes to the off-kilter oddness of the whole film
And winning the lottery which made him kinda nouveau rich, but still not good enough to hang out with the "cool kids".
Sometimes it gets close to being a romcom but the tone of the film never stays in the same place which makes it all very unpredictable.

JFL: the target of his obsession is a liberated young "woman of today", whom he feels threatened by as well as attracted to
Threatened and attracted, yes it's all coming back to me now but that's because the film gave me so much to process, mentally. It's a good one for rewatches.

JFL: His angry rant about not being able to understand Picasso or Catcher in the Rye is brilliant and weirdly moving.
Which, I guess, made it all the more difficult to be his victim. The story's ongoing change in point of view is very naturally done.

No Down Payment (1957)

I *think* I've seen it, but maybe I'm confusing it with another one. Are there two men spying on a woman sunbathing and then later come up with a phony story to be inside her house?

 

[James from London]

Are there two men spying on a woman sunbathing and then later come up with a phony story to be inside her house?

No, that sounds more like this:

Private Property (1960)

View attachment 41641



My new favourite film. It's a bit of shock to realise they made movies as sleazy as this in 1960, but at the same time, it feels like it could only have been made in 1960. I guess you could call it a low-budget suburban noir. It put me in mind of everything from Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate and Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf to Psycho, The Postman Always Rings Twice and Straw Dogs.

There are only a handful characters. The main three are a quick-witted young conman played by Corey Allen (looking like the middle brother of Mark Ruffalo and Xander from Buffy the Vampire Slayer), his slower partner-in-crime (Warren Oates, the spit of a young John Huston) and their object of desire, a respectable young housewife played by the unknown (at least to me) Kate Manx. She's almost an archetypal Hitchcock blonde but not quite. She lacks the ice-cool unattainablity of a Grace Kelly or an Eva Marie Saint. There's a moment where she's by the pool, not realising she's been spied on by the two men, and she puts a sort of lounge suit on over her bikini, but does it in such a clumsily inelegant un-Hollywood way that it feels almost pornographic, yet at the same time makes her seem vulnerable and real. The whole film's a bit like that.

If you're in the UK and you've 79 minutes to spare, it's available to watch for free on the supercool Talking Pictures website (only be sure to skip Caroline Munro's intro as it contains a dirty big spoiler).

Encore

 

[Seaviewer]

Superman (2025)
I like this well enough - with some reservations.
As I've said before, I'm not a fan of the shared universe - I think a Superman film should be a Superman film not a setup for a future Justice League. But having said that, the metahumans here don't hog too much screen time.
I like that it picks up with Superman already established - we've had enough versions of the origin story - but it's also a bit derivative of previous films. Lex is still into real estate and his Ultraman is a knock-off of Nuclear Man (from Superman IV of all things!) Meanwhile the never-filmed Brainiac script is still gathering dust.
I didn't like Supergirl being depicted as party animal, but I guess that's also a setup for her film due next year, which will presumably see her come of age.
Loved Corenswet and Brosnahan, and Krypto is a very good dog.
Four out of five stars.

 

[Mel O'Drama]

Blair Witch (2016)
AKA The Woods

Going in I had no real opinion on this. I hadn't read up on opinions about the story, nor had I really picked up much about how it was viewed critically, though I got the general sense it was fairly well-received.

First low-key disappointment was the found footage element. The original is probably the best-known example of this genre, so it shouldn't be surprising that a sequel would take this approach, but Book Of Shadows had gone in a different direction and I'd hoped this might as well (I wasn't bothered about them taking any other cues from that first sequel). The jerky movements are even more nauseating in 2016 than they were in 1999, and also feel more contrived and unforgivable because technology has improved and everyone's a filmmaker in the 21st Century, so there's simply no excuse for poor framing anymore.

As before, the characters are abrasively loud and so far up their own arses it's difficult to feel any kind of empathy. And the narcissism levels are elevated to reflect (probably fairly accurately) a generation plugged into social media and obsessed with documenting everything. One particularly unpleasant scene near the beginning showed them having a conversation over thumping music in a nightclub while filming one another, which seemed at first a huge contrivance, but on reflection I'm sure there are now people who habitually do this.

Dire as I remember Book Of Shadows being, at least the story was somewhat original. Sadly, Blair Witch is an uninspired remake of the original, with most of the same beats in much the same order: Burkitsville and history; interviewing locals; arriving at the woods; strange noises; rock pile; stick figures; disappearances; breakdowns; confrontations; house in the woods; standing in the corner... And all with shaky, badly edited imagery and lots of heavy panicked breathing.

Worse still, the creators of this film attempt to raise the stakes throwing in other perils such as serious injury (leading to body horror); falls and suchlike. When the film is barely ninety minutes, this means there is no room for pacing or suggestion. This is Blair Witch for the attention deficit.

Most disappointing of all is that we see more. Flying tents, falling trees, scary figures... they're all there to be seen. The "subtlety" is that we only see flashes of these things, but the fact that they're there at all is very telling about the mindset.

It really is quite a feat to produce a film that has far too much going on but also manages to severely bore.​

 

[Willie Oleson]

HAPPINESS (1998)



I had previously seen some clips on youtube but the full film has never been accessible online to me.
So, yet again, I had to fix it with a DVD purchase, but if I had seen the film online I may have done that anyway.

Brutal, cringe and laugh-out-loud funny, but always with (enough) sympathy for the characters.
Total commitment from the entire cast, and I didn't remember that Lara Flynn Boyle had such a sexy voice.
Some parts look like an updated version of Mike Leigh's brilliant Bleak Moments and I'd say this film is the better "American Beauty".
From the sadistically funny and somewhat poignant opening scene to the sadistically funny and very poignant final scene between father son - and everything in between is also great.


TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A. (1985)



By William Friedkin, sooo....

The story itself is nothing special, something you can get from an average TV cop show, but that shouldn't prevent it from being a great cinematic experience.
It's just that everything in this film is boring: the casting, the wooden performances, the banal dialogue spoken in a monotone voice by all the actors, the scenery, and let's not forget the horrible soundtrack which is like the worst the eighties had to offer.

There's a feeble and laughable attempt at philosophy when the D-list actress mentions "the stars are God's eyes", she mentions it twice just in case we missed it the first time.
It's a line that comes out of nowhere and also isn't going anywhere. We're not in David Lynch Land, that's for sure.
The physical fights are adequate and the story becomes slightly more exciting in the final act, or maybe it was the joyful prospect that the film was about to end soon.

The painful display of lameness and non-artistry didn't annoy me - no, it frightened me.
I also find it quite scary that a lot of people consider this film a masterpiece.
IMDB lists it as conspiracy thriller, some reviewers call it a neo-noir. Personally, I didn't see any of that in this story.
Lastly, if you manage to make an actor like Willem Dafoe look bland then you know something went teddibly wrong.

A smiley-face rating for the nudity. It wasn't much but it was there.

My suggestion: watch REPO MAN instead.

 

[James from London]

TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A.

Weirdly, I once met Kim Cattrall off of Sex and the City and confidently told her how great she was in To Live and Die in LA. "I wasn't in To Live and Die in LA," she replied. "Yes, you were," I said. "No, I wasn't," she insisted gently.

 

[Willie Oleson]

I get the second-hand impression that it didn't matter to her if she was in the film or not, as long as no one would bring it up. Ever.

And so you decided to make that your opening line. Talk about bravery!

 

[James from London]

And so you decided to make that your opening line. Talk about bravery!

Generally speaking, I find actors tend to respond well if you can compliment them on something they've done that's not very well-remembered, but not if the reason it's not well-remembered is because they weren't actually it in the first place. (That said, I genuinely did think Kim Cattrall was very good in 2L&DILA, even though it was someone else entirely, and she was very gracious about the whole thing.)

 

[Willie Oleson]

Generally speaking, I find actors tend to respond well if you can compliment them on something they've done that's not very well-remembered

I think that's understandable and besides, there's something awkwardly cliché about complimenting an artist on his/her "signature" song, as it were.
Unless, of course, there isn't much work to choose from.

But if I'm thinking ahead and consider the idea that many people think the way I do (??) then it's possible that they also have avoided that signature song compliment, and therefore it may sound surprisingly re-honest and re-fresh to compliment the artist on that very best-remembered thing.

Not that every move needs to be carefully plotted or anything.

That said, I genuinely did think Kim Cattrall was very good in 2L&DILA, even though it was someone else

Well I did mention "D-list actress" but I wouldn't say that it was her performance that brought the film down. There's also nothing unexpectedly good about it (imo) and that's very much what this film needed.
A crazy thing about the main character is that he constantly jumps over objects, even when he doesn't need to, as if he were training for the Olympics or drank too much Red Bull.

TLADinLA is supposed to be sort of a renegade/vigilante cop avenging the death of his last-day-on-duty partner.
That partner hopes to catch and arrest a bunch of crooks but it's going to be a solo operation because "this is on me, I need to do it by myself" because hm-hm something.
Apart from being utterly stupid (one man against a group) I don't think it would be allowed to operate that way unless it's a matter of improvisation that cannot be avoided.
To be fair, a story is a story and if it needs to happen this way then so be it.
Predictable spoiler: he's outnumbered by the crooks with guns and he gets shot and DIES!
Oh my god, how could this have happened - how? How?

The criminal antagonists don't do drugs, they counterfeit money. OK, it was the mid-eighties after all but there's hardly anything sinister about it.
I think this film is completely devoid of darkness and atmosphere to the extent that even an Angelo Badalamenti score couldn't save it. But that still was no excuse to give us the worst soundtrack/score instead.

Everything about this film is almost fascinatingly sucky.
It's the kind of film that one pretends not to have watched so any comments thereupon can be safely avoided in case someone should have the nitwitsy ignorance to bring it up in conversation.
Kim Cattrall (oh it's double "t", never noticed that before) survived and apparently didn't even lose face, and as of today she has massively risen in my esteem. Which, incidentally, would be a great opening line.

 

[Mel O'Drama]

Identity (2003)

It's a nice feeling to start watching a film with low-key hopes, having them met immediately, then discovering there's a whole lot more to the film that I couldn't have envisaged from the description. And that's exactly what happened here.

While the poster is familiar enough that I'm sure I was aware of the film (though admittedly it does look almost generically like any number of other horror/thriller posters of the era... not least the glossy House On Haunted Hill remake). Still, I knew nothing about it at the time. The Prime image and description helpfully showed me that John Cusack and Ray Liotta are present and correct, which was good enough.

Ahead of watching I'd somehow picked up that the premise was "inspired by Agatha Christie's 1939 whodunnit And Then There Were None" (to give it its post-1985, politically correct title). This lowered any expectations considerably since the idea of an American horror trying to out Christie Christie is borderline offensive. Fortunately, this film is smart enough to take its own direction (I almost wrote "its own identity") without an air of pretence. It does get meta about its inspiration, however, in a scene where someone explicitly references "that old movie where ten people are trapped on an island", and uses that story to propel this one forwards. One of the producers of the original Scream trilogy is involved here, so perhaps this self awareness isn't surprising.

And Then They Were None (with elements of Scream postmodernism) isn't the film's only inspiration, I think. It has to be said that showing all the characters arriving at the location where they were to be stranded reminded me a little of Clue (even if Identity's cleverness was showing even at this point, though, with events leading up to their arrival shown in a non-time-linear way but with slick crossovers between them). And the motel setting is always going to bring Psycho to mind. Are motels still a thing in the States? I tend to think of them as belonging to a certain era, but that too could be Psycho influencing me.

The film certainly looks very slick and glossy. Right out of the gate, the atmosphere is one of the "it was a dark and stormy night" variety, with thunder, lightning and biblical rain. Subtle this isn't but I had no objections because I have a particular fondness for this atmosphere in any medium of fiction. Also adding to the ambience is Alan Silvestri's evocative score, which I'll probably seek out.

The cast is fairly top-notch. John Cusack alone would have made it compelling. As seen in this very thread, I'm a fairly recent convert to his talent and I'm slowly discovering his body of work. I've yet to watch him in a role where he isn't brilliant. Ray Liotta does his Ray Liotta thing, which is predictable but adds plenty of intensity. It was a lovely surprise to see Alfred Molina as I've chanced upon (or in some cases sought out) a number of his projects recently. He, too, is as reliable as ever. Rebecca DeMornay is also present as a pampered and narcissistic actress. Less impressive but somehow reassuringly familiar is Jake Busey playing a convicted murderer, as he does in pretty much everything (most familiar to me is The Frighteners, a film of which I'm very fond).

Within half an hour, I had a gut feeling about the identity of the killer, in which I stayed resolute even after it seemed they'd been ruled out. This meant that when the reveal came and it was who I thought it was, I had the rare satisfaction of saying (out loud) "I knew it!".

What I hadn't expected, though, was the rug being pulled out from under before that point with a certain reveal that I could never have seen coming, and that changed everything. Usually, I would feel a little cheated by this, but it was so effective and so brilliantly played that I was completely invested. What's more, it dovetails perfectly with a similar reveal in a film I've watched very recently (I now view the other film as slightly less brilliant because it came a good number of years after Identity).

I would hope this film may hold up well to a second or third viewing, with the knowledge of what's really going on. And I'd certainly be up for giving it another spin.​

 

[Claude Dallas]

Yesterday i watched The Naked Gun (2025) It's not that bad but Liam Neeson is not Leslie Nielsen. There's a very short appereance by Priscilla Presley (very very short)

 

[Willie Oleson]

THE GOOD NEIGHBOR (2016)



This was a surprisingly unpleasant film, and I don't mean unpleasant as in "video nasty" or because it's badly made, it's just a very unfriendly film.
I don't know how old the young men are supposed to be, but as a rule in film: if they look young they are teenagers.
They're making a video project to prove a theory that intentional outside interference can change the way people think. Does that need to be proven at all, I wonder, but anyway it's all going to be very sensational and their video will get a million likes and they'll become youtube celebrities.

It's clear that one of the boys is the leader and the other one follows, which could have been a story of itself.
Their "lab rat" is a anti-social and grumpy old neighboUr and the story from the boy's point of view suggests that he has something to hide. In other words, the old man is a bad person and you'll probably think that everything will unfold as you have seen before.
They break into his house and cram the place with cameras and special effects equipment in order to orchestrate a "haunted house", and all this stuff is manipulated and recorded from the boy's bedroom.

The motivation for the project changes after a while, especially when they're not getting the sensational stuff they were hoping for.
Cue the obligatory American Gothic basement with a big fat lock on the door. Ah, that must be it.
Tragedy strikes and, to be fair, in a rather unexpected way.
The courtroom scene explains in flashback style who the real person behind the grumpy old man was.
I'm not a big fan of this "telling" cinema. It's good enough for a MATLOCK episode but here it feels a bit tacked on. Furthermore, it's completely unrelated to the teenage boys.
I guess the final scene conveys the principle of "there's no such thing as bad publicity" but overall it's too lukewarm for my taste.

Unpleasant and somewhat unsatisfying, but it has plenty of effective red herrings.

 

[Willie Oleson]

Right out of the gate, the atmosphere is one of the "it was a dark and stormy night" variety

I love that, it feels so cosy and there's the confusion of all the characters walking in and out of their rooms.

I'm also reminded of the first episode of the fan-tas-tic TV series THE AFFAIR in which the female protagonist describes the big event to a police officer "I remember it was a dark and stormy night".
I think the interviewer asks something like "exactly when was that?" and then she replies without a whiff of comedy "oh no, I just made that up, please don't write it down".
I was SOLD, and it only got better and better and it never stopped being great (except for the season 3 ghost character for the sake of self-reflection, they also did it in Damages, Dexter and most recently The Boys. Even if these episodes are well made it usually looks like a lot of filler once the character is revealed as a therapy-ghost).

What I hadn't expected, though, was the rug being pulled out from under before that point with a certain reveal that I could never have seen coming

I had mixed feelings about it. It's very well done but at the same time it felt like they "stole" my story and then "recast" John Cusack on top of that.
I think it's great that the finale returns to the original story but I didn't feel much connection with the real criminal.
Perhaps it's one of those twists that you have to accept wholeheartedly otherwise it doesn't work.