New on Video

[Susan]

I'm beginning to wonder if it's even worth going to rent new movies. Lately i've been getting all my movies at the library and have enjoyed that. Last nite i went to blockbuster and forked out about $12 to see "Ladder 49", "Saw" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind". The latter was overrated, "saw" was ok with a good twist ending but nothing i'd want to ever own on video and "ladder 49" was an overglorified commercial for for fireman and was quite boring actually.

So i'm pretty disappointed all around. I haven't gone to a movie in a theater since I dont' even know when, mostly due to work but also nothing ever looking good enough to go see. Now i'm wondering if i'm right, does everything now just suck? Maybe I should have gotten "Shaun of the Dead", but the few copies there were were all checked out. The funny thing is they tried to convince me of their $10 monthly program whereyou can rent all you want, but if most of the new movies are this bad i didn't see that it was even worth it when i can see stuff at the library for free.

Oh, but lots of recent dvd purchases. my latest is "Duel" which i look forward to watching this afternoon!

[Mr_Vindictive]

Susan, haven't seen you on the board lately.  Good to have you back!

As you said, most everything now sucks.  Shaun Of The Dead, as you mentioned, is fantastc but most of the other new releases are worthless.  Eternal Sunshine is pretty good, Saw was decent, but Ladder 49 is terrible.

I've been trying to branch out a bit into more foreign films being that the current slate of flicks is so bad.  City Of God is a fantastic flick, if your local Blockbuster carries it.

I recently rented Ray which was actually quite good eventhough I wasn't of the generation to grow up with his music.  Quite engrossing and entertaining.  Also, check out my review of Session 9 on this forum.  From what I know of your film tastes, it should be right up your alley.



Post Edited (03-12-05 09:31)

[dean]

There's certainly been [for me anyway] a surge in movies I don't want to see as opposed to ones I do, though there still has been plenty to find and watch at the video store that aren't new releases.

I find that branching out into good new foriegn films is the way to cure New Release Boredom.

Also, does your library have a good supply of DVDs? [for free right?]

I just ask, because for a good while now I have been borrowing Cd's from my local library, and recently have run out of ones I want to listen to [I go through a lot of music] so although the Library seems like a great place to get your DVDs, and it will forever be a great resource, the fact remains that if you watch alot of movies often from there, eventually you will run out and have to go back to the video store anyway.  There is no escape!!! mwahahahahah!!!

[onionhead]

I haven't seen much out there of late worth the money, but I have dug up some great titles at Half-Price Books in Tacoma, including Death Curse of Tartu/Sting of Death and It Lives Again/Island of the Alive for about 8 bucks apiece.  I also picked up a 6-pack of silent classics--The Golem/Nosferatu/The Hunchback of Notre Dame/The Phantom of the Opera/Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde/The Cabinet of Dr Caligari for 18 bucks.

[BeyondTheGrave]

I just signed up to netflix about a 2 weeks ago, and about 98% of the movies on my queue are either Asian or made before the 90s. Every time I go see a movie in thearters I am disppointed. I just saw "Hostage" and I will write a little review on for the board, but I am trying figure out way not to just curse out the movie in the review, and constanstly use "suck" and "blow".

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You can’t give it, you can't buy it, and you just don't get it!-Aeon Flux

[DaveMunger]

I always thought that renting new movies kind of missed the whole point of video rentals, if I wanted to see a movie that was just in the theater, I'd have seen it in the theater, meanwhile they've got classics from every era. I could be watching Battleship Potemempkin, not that I have. Not while there are still Gamera movies I haven't seen yet.

[peter johnson]

I genuinely enjoyed "Eternal Sunshine", so my recommendations may be suspect --
I've been watching a lot of older stuff, like I just saw "Almost Famous" for the first time, and thought it very good.  Nice little character study/bio. of a place and time.
Some good laughs --
I think there are some fine old things out there -- I really admire onionhead with his purchase of those Silent Classics.  Once you're done with those, try looking for some of the more obscure silent titles, like Pandora's Box, or Wedding March, or The Man Who Laughs (eerie!).
Susan, have you exhausted the Classic canon?  When was the last time you saw "M"?  Or "Scarlet Street"?  These are both Fritz Lang films.  Try working through everything available that a single director has done, or a single star.  I've done this for different people, and ended up seeing some really amazing films that I never would've seen otherwise, eg. Peter Ustinov's "Billy Budd", which we saw when on a Terance Stamp "Completist Mission".
There's gold in them thar hills!
And, oh, Dave, I promise you really would enjoy Battleship Potemkin, or anything else by Sergi Eisenstein.  Some of them take more than one viewing to "get it", though.

[Susan]

Skaboi,

Seen all the films you mentioned.  Session 9 - quite creepy. Kinda like the way saw is but in a more voyeristic way (guess it was the filming style or digital camera). Ray was ok, but it wasn't anything more special than an ABC made for tv movie.  Hollywood for the most part churns out crap, but it does feel like the past couple of years has been a real slump

Btw, i am a fan of foriegn and indy films, so i've seen alot. Dean - yeah my library has quite a collection. Plano library also has it's own website where i can search the database since the movies are divied up amongst 5 of their libraries. So i can go online and have them delivered to the one near me. They have everything from classic "King Kong" to "Village of the Damned" to recent movies. It's a fairly snooty area of town so i guess they can afford alot of titles. Last week i rented "Waterworld" (yeah I KNOW but i do like it), "Marathon Man", "Dr. Strangelove" and "Drugstore Cowboy'. Unfortunately there's not alot of b-movies, i also check out their video's if i can't find anything on dvd. Yeah, they are free btw. Hence the reason I go almost every week, since you can keep them for 7 days and even renew them if you want them longer. :)

But see I'm clever, because I also have a library card in a nearby city and they are about to start carrying dvd's so whenever i run out of stuff to watch here i'll go there. Plus ours has new ones donated all the time which is cool

[Susan]

onion - the bookstore sells movies? Hard to find good priced movies, except the walmart dvd bin where you can pick up 'red planet' or some other low grade movie for a fair price

Peter - I liked "Almost famous" the first few times i saw it. But I suspect it has a shelf life, i recently watched it and it didn't have the same likability. It's funny that the few times i've gone in blockbuster every single person is looking on the outer wall only (new releases) - as if there i a promise these movies will be good. Because what is old is outdated and must suck, at least that's the general theory. I guess they figure if a movie has 30 copies on the shelf it must be good.

I caught a sonny chi movie the other weekend on cheap non-cable tv, i liked it!  sometimes our uhf channels run the asian kung fu films on the weekends, i've always enjoyed those for whatever reason..bad dubbing and all.

And fwiw I do like classic films, i'm not snobby and only watch stuff made post 1980 (like quite a few people i know).  I've always loved AMC and TCM when i had it. I just bought "bringing up baby" and also enjoy the b-movies that came in the 70's (moreso maybe than the ones 50's) because they are just that bad. I also like more obscure titles to my generation, "South Pacific" maybe? I can't remember the title but it's about a Japanese pilot and an Ameircan pilot stranded on the same beach, one keeping the other a hostage and eventually they learn to depend on eachother and be friends. The ending really sucked tho when they got blown to bits by a landmine or something. What was the name of that movie? It's IMPOSSIBLE to find these movies at blockbuster which is why i try and seek them out at the library.

The last time i went to blockbuster i walked up and down all the aisles and was quite annoyed to find that they carried very few titles pre-1960. I think that is where my real frustration sets in, because when i go there to rent the older movies they carry in the middle sectiosn aren't really worth getting. Mostly crap like "Indepedence Day" or the more well known titles. Obscure titles have become truly obscure. so when i go i always end up trying out some of the newer stuff, and every time i swear i am disappointed! I always say never again, but once in awhile i go and throw away more money for another lamo title. So if anyone knows of any really GOOD movies of late, let me know!



Post Edited (03-12-05 19:14)

[DaveMunger]

"Hell in the Pacific", with Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune?

[Susan]

Dave - that might be it. I'm pretty sure "Pacific" was in the title, seems like it was made in the late 60's maybe but i can't be sure, it was color. Then ending was quit abrupt but I really enjoyed the complicated relationship between the two characters. War sorta shapes who your enemies are, but when you are seperated from it and all you know it seems less relevant.

[DaveMunger]

I remembered that someone said "Enemy Mine" was a ripoff of this, so I looked the latter movie up on imdb.

[AndyC]

True. That's what always bugged me about the stores that only focus on new releases. The only new releases I rent are movies I really wanted to see, but missed in the theatre (usually horror flicks my wife won't watch), or movies that didn't play in a theatre (not near me, anyway). Yet so many people never look beyond the outside walls of the Blockbuster.

What really used to p**s me off was the independent store in my hometown. I'd see a movie on the shelf for months or years, and always mean to rent it when I was in the mood. Then I'd get around to it, and it would be gone, sold in the last couple of weeks. In the 90s, the owner of this place got into a big selling frenzy. Basically, anything that hadn't rented in, I think, two months would automatically go on the second-hand rack for sale. There were classics on there.

I had a couple of chats with him on the subject. He was one of those guys who was more interested in the business end than the movies. Basically, nobody wants to see those movies, and we gotta make room for the new ones. I gave him an argument very similar to Dave's point, that the whole value of home video is that I can go out and get whatever movie I want, not just what's playing now. This overemphasis of new releases hurt one of the biggest advantages the video store had over the theatre - choice. I pointed out to him that he had always pushed his wide selection.

His answer: things weren't going that way anymore. He pointed to a venerable electronics store in the city, probably the first in the area to rent movies, and noted that they were paring down their collection, and they had always advertised thousands of movies. They were, in his opinion, seeing the light, and realizing that most people don't want to see all those movies. That was the way the industry was going, and that was all that mattered to him. What the other stores did was obviously right.

When you are actually passionate about movies. It's just kind of sickening to run into an attitude like that - somebody who is more concerned with the trends in the business than the movies he rents. So many of us would dream of owning a store like that, and for me, at that time, the idea that someone who wasn't passionate about movies could be running a video store just seemed wrong.

That was, of course, before Blockbuster really became omnipresent around here. The guy is a veritable film buff by comparison to anyone connected with that company.

Mom & pop shops should endeavour to be different, offer something the big stores don't, and try to grab a niche market. All that has kept this guy open is that the town is still, just barely, too small for a Blockbuster. As soon as one comes to town, he's screwed. Still, if all your local independent store can do to compete against the big players is try to imitate them, who really cares if it disappears?

[trekgeezer]

Enemy Mine was based on a novella by Barry B. Longyear, which for all I know was taken from Hell in the Pacific. The story did win a Nebula award in 1979.

Another movie with a similar theme is None but the Brave(1965) with Clint Walker, Frank Sinatra, Brad Dexter, Tommy Sands, and Tatsuya  Mishashi.  A squad of Marines crash lands on an island occupied by a small Japanese force and the enemies must work together to survive.

[peter johnson]

This could herald the return of the Art Cinema.
Consider:  The video stores were the death of the single-screen Art houses, because of selection.
Now, selection is diminshed.  Where to go?  Someone needs to open an Art house!!
Anyway, I hope that's true . . .
peter johnson/denny crane