Films you might have missed in 2017

https://twitter.com/OnePerfectShot/status/948320757876183042

One perfect shot have their best movies and it prompted me to rewrite about some of the films you may have missed last year.

Marshall

This is court room battle with Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American Supreme Court Justice. At a time when racism denied him the ability to represent a client. Its smart, sometimes funny and sometimes tragic. Its a excellent watch and compelling story shot well.

The Show

This was a surprising film. The cinematography isn’t great and the story tends to lag in some parts but as a whole the film actually spiked my interest. Not for the faint hearted but not the usual nonsense horror you see.

Detroit

If you haven’t seen Detroit, I don’t know what to say to you. Everytime I watch it, it makes me pretty sad to know its all based on real memories. Its super compelling and the pacing is perfect, with elements of lag to add emphasis to the scene.

Radius

Surprising indie film, about a man who kills everyone within a certain radius of himself. As the film unfolds, we get to learn more about him, her and why. Its cleverly unfolding with enough pace to keep you interested. Easily missed but a real gem.

The Wall

I don’t usually like war films but this one involves 2 people and a voice (check the credits!). Doug Liman’s director touch makes the deadly cat-and-mouse tension so thick you can feel the sand in the air. Its amazing what you can do with a good story and a good director.

Gifted

This film can be summed up as a fight for a child’s freedom or the fight for her gift. Somewhat feel good but its got a strong message about living and freedom. Don’t miss this film!

2:22

I quite enjoy these types of films, its like groundhog day, one of my favourite shows which got canned was daybreak. Time looping with different tries ending in the same or very similar results.

Extortion

Drama with some horrific cliffhangers which gets you wondering what on earth you would do? Really got me, especially some of the twists and turns.

Aftermath

Best Arnie movie in a long time, I would say. Its slow building film not about the accident of the mid airplane crash but the need for closure & resolution. Based on a real mid aircrash, its excellently done with each character transforming over the course of film. Surprising ending too

Jungle

I wasn’t sure I could see Harry Potter in the Jungle but this surprised me at how harrowing this film is. Bit like Extortion, it makes you wonder what you would do – although you won’t catch me in a jungle to be fair. Think of this film like 127 hours and touching the void. Another true life story dramatised

What is the imdb party game?

A Shot, Anyone?

I played this game yesterday night at a party and thought it was worth writing up because I couldn’t find it anywhere. I’ll have to credit either Mike, Karolina,  Steve or Sharon for the party game.

The game works like this…

  1. Everybody sits in a circle with their mobile phones. One player  (the loser from the last round) picks a film from imdb.com. announces the film title and year to the circle.
  2. Everybody else types the predicted imdb rating of the film announced into their calculator app or write it down on paper.
  3. Once everybody (except the player who announced the film) is done, rating predictions are revealed to everybody around the group
  4. Highest and lowest are noted and the player who announced the film reads out the actual imdb rating.
  5. The player with the furthest rating from the imdb rating loses and needs to drink a shot of vodka. The loosing player then goes on to pick the next film in the next round.

Other rules…

  • Cheating by looking up the imdb rating is punishable by a double shot of vodka.
  • Players can challenge the player who announced the film title if its too obscure. That player must read out a description and the top actors in the film. If nobody recognises the top actors, another film must be picked.
  • If there is a draw of any kind, the players in the draw have to guess the rating of a sequel or prequel. If there is no such thing, a related film must be found.

Variations…

  • While people choose their rating, the film picker can read out the first public review, a quote or piece of trivia. Film covers can be shown of theme music played.
  • Vodka can be substituted for any other spirit or any other forfeit

About time, chick-flick with a big message

About Time

I watched About time which is self described as being from the creator of Love Actually, Notting Hill and Four weddings and a Funeral.

The tagline is: A new funny film about love. With a bit of time travel. And you know what kind of a sucker I am for Time Travel, but I wasn’t convinced till I read a brief review.

There must be a reason for its 7.8 imdb rating. Well this sums it up

The main reason I’m writing this review is due to the fact that most of the negative reviewers on IMDb seem to have missed the point of this film entirely. I’m not going to go into much detail as I think the film speaks for itself (and I hate it when people put spoilers in their reviews).

It’s not a romantic comedy as most would have you believe. It’s a comedy/drama that revolves around the relationship between a father and son. The romantic themes are just a small part of this great film.

Once you stop thinking of it as a rom-com you will see the brilliance of it all. It’s not the greatest film of all time, it’s not the prettiest, the funniest or the best written.

What it is is a heartfelt tale of a father/son relationship. The time travel elements are just a plot device, the romance, just a plot device. It’s laugh out loud funny in spots and tear-jerking in others. It’s well written, but still light and breezy when it needs to be.

Look past the surface of this film and feel the emotion that these fine actors bring to the screen. Let go and just enjoy it for what it is.

And that person was right. The time traveling part was interesting but then a certain thing happens and your questioning what you would do. But the things which are really noteworthy for me is the message about life and the relationship with his father in the later parts of the film.

There’s a couple great quotes in the film and here’s one near the end…

Tim: We’re all traveling through time together, every day of our lives. All we can do is do our best to relish this remarkable ride.

Inception the most pirated movie on Bittorrent for the last month

Inception cover

Inception has been the most pirated movie on Bittorrent for the last month now. 4, 3, 2, 1 week(s) ago. And its had some very strong challengers from Scott Pilgrim, The social network and Wall street: Money never sleeps.

I did notice that when the HD version of Inception did hit the scene, the pirate bay was overloaded for a good few hours.

I’m sure the chief’s hollywood are cursing the scene for being so well organized and getting a hd rip out before they could get the retail DVD out. I’ve personally had my Inception Blu-ray/DVD/itunes (Triple Play) on pre-order for about 2 months now. I’m sure when Amazon do send it out, it will sit on my DVD rack with great prominence (my first blu-ray). Now I need to get myself a inception movie poster because they are great.

Also great to see Inception is still in position 4 of IMDB’s top 250 of all time right behind Godfather part 2.

And even more films you may have missed…

Inception – Everyone knows I love this film. Actually the clip above came to me via the inspirational which is imran ali. The reason why I love the film is because frankly its amazing to watch and enjoy, but also I got the idea for mydreamscape.org after watching inception. Some people have said its the matrix of this generation, I’m not so sure but I can certainly see why people would say that. Its breath taking from start to finish and theres a healthy amount of background mythology to keep us all guessing. I can’t wait to own a copy of my own, so I can watch it at home with my home cinema.

4, 3, 2, 1 – This is the Urban version of Sliding doors and although I wanted to not like this film, I actually enjoyed it. Theres pace and a clever storyline which overlaps its self when it makes sense. Noel Clarke has really worked hard on this one, once again staring in it and co-directing it. All the stars from the Adulthood and kidulthood are in this one and its slightly weird to see them play a different role from there other films. The woman are the centre stage in this film and they play there parts to the maximum, but the killer role for me has to be Kevin Smith’s role as a American courier. What I can’t work out is if it was before or after the no fly incident.

Donnie Darko: The Director’s Cut – When I first saw this version of Donnie Darko I turned my nose up at it. I felt it gave away too much. Now although I’m still glad I got the original version, I found this version in retrospect a interesting twist on the tail. It does spell out a lot more whats going on but then again, it brings a more informed discussion about the ethics of time travel.

Exit through the gift shop – This is a film very few people saw in the cinema but I did watch it with a friend. Its basically the story of Banksy and street art. I can’t really say much about the movie without giving away the plot but I will say its not about Banksy exactly, its more a story about street art which was never told. In actual fact its about a guy called Mr Brainwash or Thierry Guetta who started to film street artists doing there work and promised to make it into a documentary. He did but boy oh boy was it bad. He went on to do Madonna’s next album cover. Anyway, this must be watched specially because it seems so unreal but in actual fact its actually mainly true.

I love this quote at the end of the film by Banksy – I used to encourage everyone I knew to make art; I don’t do that so much anymore.

The social network – Just watched this one in the cinema in Digital projection and to be honest I didn’t really want to like it but I found myself warming to some of the characters in the film. I know its not the exact story of how facebook started but the general story is all there. Zuckerbergs (played by Jesse Elsenberg) clever wit shows through but you can’t help but feel sorry for Eduardo Saverin (played by Andrew Garfield) who gets shafted on a share deal by Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake) and Zuckerberg. To be fair he may have killed part of the idea with the advertising but hey we will never know. I guess at the end of the day, I do think the woman in the film are almost laughable and thats a big problem but Zuckerberg is a nerdy guy and the opposite sex is simply another lifeform for him.


If you liked these recommendations, theres even more dotted around my blog. [1][2][3]