I’ve booked a ticket to go and see the latest Fast and Furious film. This could be a massive mistake because when I went to the last one I walked out it was shockingly bad. This time I go knowing that it will definitely be utter shit. There are a few reasons I am going to spend a couple of hours in the dark:
I like going to the cinema.
This film is in screen 8 which is the comfy one.
I’m going to listen to God Awful Movies after I’ve watched this.
The point of going to watch this film isn’t the actual film experience it’s the experience of listening to a podcast that rips it to shit afterwards. I have listened to every episode of God Awful Movies and I even send them money using Patreon. I pay the God Awful guys because they entertain me each week and I am happy to reward them for that. Noah, Heath and Eli make me laugh and have helped get me through some iffy times in my life. It’s a couple of hours each week where I can concentrate on something so shitty that these guys have made over 300 episodes where they explain, and take the piss out of, terrible religious films. F9 is a Patreon bonus episode. So, I’m going to see the film. So that I can understand what they are talking about. My time in the cinema will be rewarded when I listen to the podcast after.
I’ve also been watching Boondock Saints II because the GAM guys are reviewing it in a standard episode. I’ve watched Boondock Saints as a lot of the music I like references it and uses quotations from the movie. It is not a good movie.
What follows is something I tried doing before but didn’t follow it through. This is communication 1897 and so here are a few things that happened in 1897, quite likely the ones I find curious rather than the best ones:
Some fraternities were founded in the USA – by the way, fuck fraternities, fucking awful things.
Dracula first published.
The Lattimer massacre.
The Korean Empire is founded.
The Wissenschaftlich-humanitäres Komitee is founded, the first LGBT campaigning organisation.
I had some time and so I decided to go to the cinema. I almost feel guilty if I don’t go enough as I pay money each month to see as many films as I like and it also gives me something to write here, these are a regular feature of this unvisited site. When looking at the list of films playing there wasn’t a great choice and so I plumped for The Conjuring 3. I haven’t seen any of the other Conjurings but figured it won’t matter a huge amount. I don’t like horror films generally but my reasoning was: why not go?
While driving the approach to the cinema I noticed the state of the tide and it was almost at max height. Whether it was ebbing or flowing was something I would have to wait to find out when I left the cinema – it was flowing. Most of the mud bank was hidden and I couldn’t see any of the channels produced by surface off-run. The weather at the time was low clouds hanging over the top of the Downs with plenty of rain during the day, it had been raining for two complete days, but this was welcome.
After watching this film I rated it on IMDB and there’s a complete guide to my rating system within this communication from a few years ago. I eventually shared the score on Twitter but I need access to my PC for that as I removed Twitter from my phone a long time ago because it doesn’t matter.
I went to see this film and rated it 4/10. The Conjuring 3: The Devil Made Me Do It (2021) – IMDb – https://t.co/lyLnJjzCrO
I gave this film a 4/10 and I think that was quite generous really. This film does not make it into the good-bad film. It is just a bad-bad film. This film is shit. Makes no logical sense. Has no plot that fits together. Is largely bad publicity for a misguided couple of “paranormal” investigators.
I wonder weather there’s too much in this film. Does the body-breaking look stupid and unrealistic? Do the tunnels seem excessive and un-scary? I wonder if more menace could have been put into this film by cutting out a lot of the “scary” stuff. I used to be terrified by horror films when I was younger. The Omen still makes me shiver – although I haven’t watched it for years and I ponder whether that seems shit now. I have “grown up” in then sense that I understand the reality of the world and don’t believe in god, the devil, demons or supernatural things. It’s funny how most famous ghost cases end up being shown for fraud by the conspirators when they confess but the news rarely gets out. Amityville had the protagonists admit they made it up, that famous Nessie photo was called out by one of the pranksters etc.
I get that people like being scared and I would imagine that if you believed in spirits or ghosts or god or souls or the devil or witches or any of the super-natural then this film would bother you. But the reality is that this film had a poor script, a poor plot and poor logic. A man died in reality and his murderer went to prison. This film is horror glorified wank.
I went to the cinema. Again. Not really a surprise I guess but given the recent Covid-times I think that maybe sitting in a room with other people isn’t a good idea. But then, I think that the cinema needs money to survive and so far there haven’t been more than 20 people in the films I’ve seen and the distancing is quite good. It’s nice to be back [I’m not counting this film].
I went to see Land and it was in screen 8 of the Cineworld cinema in Rochester. I do like screen 8, it was meant to be the “posh” one many years ago but now it’s just slightly more comfortable than all the others with its better chairs and fewer seats. I’m reasonably sure I’ve seen films in there just because it was in screen 8 and not for any other reason.
As I drove along the riverside towards the cinema I noted the state of the tide and it was low. I could see all of the mudbanks and only the central channel was buoyancy-providable. The weather was actually quite nice given the previous day where it rained the whole day and I was silly enough to go for a walk to see the Medway Megaliths, my shoes were soaked but the sun dried them nicely. After I’ve seen a film I rate it on IMDB and there’s a guide to the rating system within this communication. Normally I would then tweet the result from my phone but I removed Twitter a long time ago so the tweets have to wait for the next opportunity when I’m on my home PC.
So, I had to reread my IMDB communication to remind myself of the scoring system. Then I rated this as a 6. It was a perfectly fine film but not one I’d watch again. I booked whatever film I thought looked most interesting. I had slight pangs of concern when I entered the theatre as all the people in there were women and I ended up being the only man in the room. All the trailers were for what I would call “emotional” films – as stereotypical it is I like space films and then thrillers and action films I guess although most action films are stupid. These are not my usual style of film to watch but I was here now and so it was time to soak up what was on offer.
For me the star of the film was the Wyoming countryside. It looks just absolutely gorgeous. It made me think of doing the same and abandoning all of the trappings of modern life and to head off and lead what would feel like a simpler life. When I say get rid of modern life this woman still have tinned food, knives and a rifle. I wonder if everyone feels that they would like to survive by their “wits” rather than our current world system?
The film was broadly speaking enjoyable and told a nice story, one of emotional recovery and trying to learn to live again after tragedy. I know it was for the purposes of the film for the main character to survive after the midpoint of the film but I’m not sure she would. You end up wondering “what are the odds” but it is dealt with very well although all films suffer survivor bias.
The only part of this film that irritated me slightly was that it made shooting things look really simple and easy. I’m not talking about the pulling of the trigger or the moral problems of killing life but I am talking about how hard it is to hit a target with a rifle. Films make this look much simpler and easier than it really is. The funny thing is I actually know what I’m talking about here – I’m a weapons instructor, coach and a range officer – hilarious I know but I do have those qualifications and use them regularly. Me, having official qualifications in something extreme, I find it a curiosity.
Yesterday I took a trip to the cinema to watch a film. This should have been a celebratory return after the cinemas all shut down during the last lockdown. The last film I saw was Akira and so it seemed fitting that I had booked a ticket to see a Japanese animation. I was looking forward to it but I did have one large problem.
I went to see this but I can’t comment or score it. Demon Slayer the Movie: Mugen Train (2020) – IMDb – https://t.co/Uxc1LALMOs
I am clearly very tired and so when I rest or am still for a while I start to fall asleep. This is a little embarrassing as the other day I was struggling to stay awake while mining in Minecraft. I think the next time I go to the cinema it will have to be during the middle of the day. That might help. I tactically closed my eyes a few times during this film. Here’s what I mostly remember:
Gravestones. People on a train. Fights. Shiny faced demon. Train develops organic pink shit all over it. A terrible song at the end.
It doesn’t seem fair to give this movie a score on IMDB when I didn’t manage to see all of it and it’s not the movie’s fault I couldn’t. My overall impression was that it wasn’t very good anyway but, when I look at the reviews on IMDB, everyone seems to have really enjoyed it. I think my problem is that it looked too TV Series like. I think that type of animation works well in shorter format. I don’t really think it works for the cinema. But then perhaps I’m wrong? Plenty of people seem to enjoy it. I think I’ll be a little more choosy for my next film.
The other night I made sure I went to the cinema because it was the last time I would be able to go to the Cineworld cinema at Rochester for the foreseeable future. I went out of a sense of duty I guess.
We can confirm that all Cineworld cinemas in the UK and Ireland will be temporarily closed from Friday, October 9. For more information and frequently asked questions, click here >> https://t.co/7ld69cNr2zpic.twitter.com/5hmQGEUPGu
I faced quite a problem in deciding which film to see. When I looked at the listings I noticed that Akira was playing and damn I love that film. But there were also some films I hadn’t seen before and maybe it would be better to see a new film rather than one I’ve seen every decade since the late 1980s. Here’s a list of the potentially shitty films I could have seen; After We Collided, Bill and Ted, Saint Maud, Schemers, The New Mutants. I’d already walked out of Tenet and really didn’t want another attempt to see that. I had a conversation with Smith and decided it would be Akira – my fear was that I would fall asleep but it was definitely better than any other film on that evening.
The last time I saw Akira was with Smith at the British Film Institute and I wrote about it in this communication. Until I just looked up that link I didn’t know how far in the past that film trip was. I do know that pretty much every time I watch the film the ending surprises me because I think my brain blocks it out.
The tide was quite high as I drove along the esplanade and I parked in my usual area where there are plenty of spaces but slightly further from the entrance doors. My current parking policy is to park away from entrances and walk, it’s far less stress than finding somewhere close. I had cinema food as dinner – a hot dog, some popcorn and a bag of minstrels, might as well make the most of my last trip. I think I would have liked a massive ice cream but the thought of diabetes kept niggling in the back of my head. After watching the film I would normally rate it on IMDB, but I’ve rated Akira before. The rating system defines that this is a 10/10 film because I have seen it multiple times, bought it on multiple formats and also been to see it at the cinema more than once.
I went to see Akira last night. I can't rate it again on imdb but it is clearly a 10/10.
I love this film. It packs so much social commentary into its storyline that it always impresses me. There is always something that happens every time I see this that means the overall movie makes more sense. Except the end. I’m not sure the end every really makes sense to me. I know what is happening but I’m surprised every time.
When I walked out of the cinema I had a real feeling of loss. It felt like the end of an era. I’ve spent so long in that place and have used it as a refuge from my own thoughts at times that I feel a real personal connection with that collection of bricks. I will be sad if it doesn’t open again. I will have to try and find a new cinema and escape venue.
I took a trip to the cinema largely because it was there and I hadn’t been in a while. I noticed that the tide was low as I drove into the car park. It’s not often I see the river that low, all of the bank was clear of water along with clear delineations of where the boats chill out. This morning I rated the film on IMDB, there is a communication explaining the rating system here.
I guess this probably needs some explanation? Tenet was the only film I vaguely wanted to see. In fact that’s a lie. I didn’t want to see it. I thought Inception was very over-rated and so I went to see Tenet as a last resort I guess. I was hoping that I would secretly find it amazing and really enjoy it. I did not. A personal recommendation to see this film concluded with the words “but it looks gorgeous, just don’t expect to understand it”. Looking gorgeous is something I can cope with so I tried it out. I think I lasted just over an hour into this THREE hour film.
I don’t care for Bond films. I don’t find them interesting or fascinating and I couldn’t give a shit about the development of the “character” or anything else. Tenet was touted as a kind of Bond film. I guess that’s not a great start. The trailers looked OK but a bit bullshit with the backwards time thing but I still thought I would give it a go. THREE hours!!
The opening act with an orchestra concert being attacked was pretty tame. I didn’t see anything that hasn’t been done before. It all looked rather pedestrian. I did note that if you are going to have people talking to each other then it’s normally a good plan to have the words they say audible. Having characters shout while in gas masks was stupid, I couldn’t understand what they were saying and this started my journey of not giving a crap. Some stuff happened. Someone died by their own hand. Then someone didn’t die. Pedestrian and boring. But, give the film a chance I will.
Secret lab. Time bullshit. Plutonium. Rich boy. Spy person extremely talented at everything that needs to be done. Time bullshit. Blonde. Glamorous settings. Speed boats. More dialogue I couldn’t hear or understand. A little more macho posturing for good effect and add a sprinkle of bullshit.
Even the road chase was a bit shit.
So, the first time I looked at my watch to see if it was worth staying in the cinema, maybe there wasn’t that long to go, was at 45 minutes. This film is THREE hours. I decided to give it another 15 minutes and see if the film improved. It did not. The time stuff was fine. It didn’t make sense with respect to the film but I could cope with that. The rest of it just felt a bit wank. The moment that prompted me to leave the cinema and return home to watch some NFL was when the man decided he had to save the blonde. This man was selected because he was fucking hardcore, he would do everything he could to complete the mission. Then he risks everything to save a woman. Just absolutely derivative and boring. I called “Time Out” and left. I think I made it just a little more than one hour into this “masterpiece” and pretty much disliked every moment. There wasn’t anything I saw that made me think – wow, this is different.
Because the cinemas are so quiet at the moment it is actually quite nice to go there. They’ve got themselves sorted for Covid quite well with hand sanitiser, face masks, wipes etc. The cinema I go to has a 5 people only in the toilets but you can’t actually see in the toilets to know if there are 5 people so I’m not sure how that will work on a busy day. A lot of the current crop of films out are reissues. The cinemas or film companies are trying to get the world used to the cinema again by getting us to see our “favourite” films. Amusingly a lot of these films are ones I couldn’t be bothered to see again. They are pushing Inception quite a bit ready for the release of Tenet but I hated Inception and won’t be going to see Tenet. I’ve just tried to create a hyperlink to my review of Inception but that term doesn’t exist on this site! I’ve just looked up when that film came out and it was in 2010 which is before this site existed, my dark ages I guess. I can tell you that a friend recently asked if Inception was brilliant or bullshit and my answer was “bullshit”.
The state of the tide of the river Medway was high. It wasn’t completely high tide as I could see some mud bank on the eastern side, the river was also flowing seaward quite fast and so I think the tide was waning. There are times when the river looks still, times when it flows the “wrong” way and times when it looks too fast. These coincide with whatever the tide is doing at that time, but with a small delay the further upstream you get.
River Medway – I was going to walk further along for the picture but it was near film time.
After watching this film I rated it on IMDB. There’s a whole convention about what the ratings actually mean and descriptions of such are in this communication. When I can then access my PC I tweet the IMDB result. I gave up Twitter on my phone and so I now only check it when I can access the flight simulator. The result is below:
So, things. I considered walking out of this film but thought it would be a little rude so I stayed until the end. This film was a “horror” and I’m not really into that. Once you give up all belief in supernatural you can then logic away the scary shit and just watch the film for giggles. I can remember being a teenager and seeing The Omen, Poltergeist, Amityville and so on and they really disturbed me. There was something about those films that really shook me deep. I think I knew they weren’t real but the playfullness of the filmmakers affected me, which I guess is the point. While watching The Vigil I had the following thoughts:
I am bored and this film is boring me.
This guy is getting paid USD400 for reading Psalms and he is failing to do that. He made an agreement but isn’t holding up his side of the bargain. I don’t know what the rules are concerning a Shomer but he’s not doing anything. A Shomer is there to read to the corpse and ease the spirit on its journey. How long does this journey take? If the Shomer stops reading for a toilet break is that allowed? Must the reading be constant? What are the rules? Overall this seems a silly idea to me. Anyway, the main character isn’t doing his job.
Overall I thought this film was poor. It could have been really good. But it used the sound and music to increase tension when it would have been harder but more rewarding to really explore the relationship between this character and his religion and the traditions it has. I can’t decide if this film was a cheap attempt at horror or a real exploration of the psyche!
This Shomer has left his protected bubble of Hasidic Jews in New York. We learn why he left I guess and he is part of a support group for people who leave this oppressive regime. He suffers guilt and problems stemming from a traumatic incident along with leaving the community. We learn that he has seen things and takes tablets to help him control his visions. So, this film is about the psychotic breakdown of a man leaving a religious organisation and the mess that the Hasidic caused him. He is troubled by his own demon and it comes to him while he is [not] doing this Shomer job. I might read a little more about this film and, if I’m lucky, it will be a metal breakdown rather than a horror movie. I won’t be letting you know though!
If you want to know some more about strange religious behaviour then just read an article on the Eruv. It’s a piece of string that “extends” the boundary of your property so that you can go outside and do things on the days when God insists you stay inside your property. Why God allows this loophole is beyond me, it’s all rather made-up.
This film was terrible. I hated it. I considered walking out but was curious how they would end it. It was utter shit.
I think the lesson here is how we blame the wrong people for the things that go wrong. Woke up late? Your fault. Lost job just before retirement payout? Likely the fault of the regulations that are written by your government. Addicted to opiates? Likely the fault of the government. The media spin everything so our anger is misplaced. It keeps the masses quiet. Why don’t Amazon pay any tax? Because of the laws of the land. Why don’t companies pay fairly? Because of the rules of the land. Why is your MP fucking useless? Because individual people are selfish and vote without any form of altruism. Best I stop this before I end up in a downward spiral. This film was shit.
To avoid the last day of this heatwave, there have been seven days with temperatures in excess of 30C, I booked in to the cinema. The main reason was to enter an air conditioned building for a few hours and relax without sweating all over everything. I went to see 100% Wolf.
On the way to the cinema I noted that the tide was very low. All of the mud banks were visible and the little boats were stuck in their tiny channels that keep them from beaching. After the film I thought about the rating and then did that and tweeted the result:
I gave this film a 4/10 because I fell asleep for about twenty minutes and then proceeded to figure out exactly what had happened to the characters once I’d woken up. I only watched until the end just to see what happened. This is possibly not the fault of the film but the fault of the hot weather and me not sleeping great. Without doing some control experiments I won’t know about which cause it is.
This film surprised me at the beginning as it was an Australian production and I don’t think you see many of those, especially animations. Maybe I’ll try and watch something slightly more highbrow over the next few days. I’ll let you know of course. In the mean time, while the world awaits MSFS 2020 here’s a clip of me going Gatwick to London City for giggles.
When reviewing the film Proxima I mentioned there were two films from my youth that made a big impression. One I found on a listicle site of the greatest sci-fi films you haven’t seen – that was called The Quiet Earth. The other was some bizarre French time travel animation with small round animals that I had occasionally searched for. This week I think I found it “Les Maîtres du temps” and a quick search on Amazon showed it going to around £40 for a DVD. I couldn’t find it streaming anywhere and wondered what to do until I then remembered that this sort of thing is all over YouTube.
I started watching a French language version with English subtitles on YouTube but the subtitles were out of synchronisation, being quite early, and it looked as though it was getting worse so after about twenty minutes I had another look and found an English language dubbed version of the film on YouTube.
Feel free to watch this movie. I don’t know how long this iframe will stay there. I guess there’s a chance that this film will get removed from YouTube but given that it has been there since 2013 I guess maybe that’s not so much of a problem.
This was the film from my youth that has often come back into my thoughts. It follows the adventures of a space ship and its inhabitants who all have different issues and problems. It’s a lovely film from a simpler time. To be honest I joke about the time being simpler. We were living in the early eighties with the constant threat of nuclear war and only four television channels. It seems that kids were safer on the streets but I guess that’s not really true. There were race riots in London, the IRA were blowing up shit and we went to war [technically not a war] to save two shitty islands in the South Atlantic because a few hundred people lived there. The house where I grew up had just upgraded to a colour television and for heat we burnt coal in two open fires in the house.
The theme of time travel in this film freaked me out and I know it made me think an awful lot about time travel and paradoxes. In reality, we literally have no idea what happens if these things are possible. There’s lots of fictional writing but we can’t know what really happens. It’s like wormholes you see, as much as they are fixed within the collective consciousness we don’t even know if they exist.
This film is a good film. It was co-produced within Hungary and the eastern-European production values shine through. Any animations coming out of that part of the world in the 80s were horrifically strange and messed up. It was a bit of a thing to look for when I was growing up. I reckon everyone should watch this movie and begin to understand just how lucky you all are these days with your CGI and computer graphics. If a film can take you to its world but be low cost and production values then it is a good film. If you are engrossed and don’t notice the cheapness then it is a good film. It’s all very well these modern films being bursting with effects and good looking stuff but if your story just comes down to who has the biggest fists then it’s a touch pathetic.
