Messiah of Evil is awesome & a public domain dollar store DVD classic - check out how the directing couple’s career ended.
1 Like
watching seven samurai, finally
6 Likes
damn that was a great film. Five bags of popcorn
7 Likes
Watching Death Wish and holy moley if this isn’t just the very image of a reactionary libertarian fantasy wrought in the most vivid and giddy way. Really fascinating and frankly entertaining for how deranged the whole thing is.
4 Likes
jeff goldblum being in that movie for 2 seconds is something i think about a lot
3 Likes
It also has a great soundtrack by Herbie Hancock???!
2 Likes
I find Death Wish to be a bit too sour for my tastes but Death Wish 3 is one of my favorites. If you are into the weird fascist overtones and conservative cities-are-scary feel of the movie but want a bit of a campier tone, I highly recommend checking it out.
5 Likes
the final shot of that movie is perfect (psycho shit)
if anyone’s interested in a similar reactionary venture albeit with capital ‘I’ Ideas (for better or worse (much better movie imo tho)) I highly recommend Peter Boyle in Joe
2 Likes
That’s what I’ve heard and the goal of watching the first one. I’ve heard it kind of looks like a Joel Schumacher Batman at times.
1 Like
When driving home today I was briefly behind a car with a DFENS license plate a la Falling Down, wasn’t sure what to make of that.
8 Likes
goon.jpg
3 Likes
Kersey’s apartment in DEATH WISH has some amazing wallpaper, most of the film is too ugly for me to enjoy, great wallpaper though, also amazing final shot, one of my favs
3 is a masterpiece but 2 is also sick fun, I have many screenshots of all those thugs on my hard drive, they all have great names like Punkcut and Stomper, lots of great looks in that one, also love Jimmy Page’s soundtrack, would listen to it over any of those Zeppelin songs about hobbits any day, I don’t think I’ve seen 4 but we had fun skimming through 5 in a groupwatch a year or two ago, the soccer ball kill is top tier, I once drove all across Long Island and Queens searching for a VHS copy of Death Wish 5 for my uncle, he didn’t know it had come out and was very upset that it didn’t get a theatrical release, we came up short in our search I think, he was also very upset that I wasn’t excited to watch a new Death Wish, well guess what uncle, I would be now, you better believe I’d excitedly watch any Charles Bronson movie with you now
13 Likes
Is it death wish 4 or 5 that’s about the garment factory because that’s one of the funniest movies I have ever seen
It’s 5!! The dry cleaning carousel shootout or whatever the fuck it is at the end is so fucking funny
2 Likes
Those movies got so much better when Cannon got a hold of them, we’ve been watching Oz and I kept thinking about death wish 2 because ernie hudson’s daughter also gets raped into a movie coma by Evil Thugs, though she doesn’t fling herself onto a wrought iron fence to commit suicide immediately afterwards
3 Likes
death wish 5 was also the one that, iirc, had to be moved to canada to save money because they spent 2/3 of the budget on a 72 year old charles bronson’s salary
one of the worst-written wikipedia articles I’ve ever read which really adds to it
6 Likes
I have been watching a lot of cycling documentaries. The best one so far was Pedal (2001), a very funny and depressing doc about NYC bike messengers which features–among other wild characters–a messenger named Skeletor, a messenger who has panic attacks while delivering to a building with the number 666, a cab driver who fantasizes guiltily about maiming messengers, Ed Koch himself (!!!) pretending to have forgotten his role in the bike legislation of the 80s, and a guy named Eric who provides rambling, worshipful narration monologues for much of the movie before suddenly becoming the most depressing and interesting character in it. Highly recommend this doc.
The subtitles are mine. I am learning to write subtitles using Subtitle Edit and gave myself this movie as a challenge. Hope to have more to say about this soon.
The other documentary I loved was A Sunday In Hell (1977). Unfortunately the director is a loathsome creep but his two 1970s pro cycling documentaries are historical sources at this point, not only for their coverage of famous athletes like Eddy Merckx… but also for their focus on the labor involved in putting on a media-funded bike race. A Sunday In Hell has loads of amazing footage of a newspaper printers’ strike which delayed the 1976 Paris-Roubaix race. There are some great sequences where the cyclists are squeezing through shoulder-tight corridors of hollering printing-press operators who are simultaneously protesting and cheering, in their own way. It must have been incredible to strike at a race like this.
Something I’m realizing is that there are precious few good movies about riding bikes. I don’t mean movies where people just happen to bike, but, like… sports movies about bikes, or bike touring, or whatever. I think the lack of bike fiction features is probably because it’s hard to film people on bikes, or to act while biking… but even in the documentary space I’m not finding a ton of standalone films I enjoy. Pro cycling is a Television Thing. I expected to find more movies about cycling teams, but I didn’t. Maybe it’s because of the weird frission between team and individual accomplishment in pro cycling, but I figured that would actually create more opportunities for good movies about angry cyclists, at least in Europe! Maybe it’s because pro cycling teams are all in some way nerd ass branding shit, they’re all named after flooring companies or grocery stores and their names change every two years. Maybe the doping scandals probably killed a lot of English language bike enthusiasm, too, and that killed funding for cycling movies? Today I could stream multiple movies about Lance being a dick but I don’t really want to, haha.
So I am rapidly running out of Good Cycling Movies to even watch. I saw The Flying Scotsman and it was so neat and tidy compared to Obree’s real story that I had a hard time enjoying it. (It was made with his help, so the soft touch is forgiveable.)
I’ve been wondering if I should just try to make a nasty mean cycling videogame… maybe this should be my calling
15 Likes
SWARM’S TOP 10 FILMS OF 2023
- RIDDLE OF FIRE
- PERFECT DAYS
- TIME BOMB Y2K
- D&D: HONOR AMONG THIEVES
- ROBOT DREAMS
- THE HOLDOVERS
- THE ZONE OF INTEREST
- DREAM SCENARIO
- POLITE SOCIETY
- EILEEN
WORST FILM OF THE YEAR:
OPPENHEIMER
3 Likes
I only saw 8 movies that came out this year and didnt like most of em so ill do 10 movies i saw this yr, in the order i watched em
Die parallelstraße 1962
The pillow book 1995
The blackout 1997
Sebastiane 1976
Intimacies 2012
Flowers of shanghai 1998
F for fake 1973
We were smart 2019
Personal problems 1980
The conversation 1974
Killers of the flower moon 2023
7 Likes
Watched Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem…it ruled. Looks great and just a damn fun time. Too bad it sounds like it didn’t make much of a splash.
5 Likes