• The first stage of the forum upgrades has now been completed but they remain in a degraded state and are still being worked on. Normal posting/reading should now be possible.
    Please read this thread for more details.
    New user registrations are currently disabled.

SMB Film Thread 2025

Status
Not open for further replies.
The Assessment
Better than I expected, this film about the threat of AI, and our reliance on it, felt very now.

I can tell you from the off it’s not going to be for everyone. It feels very much like an adaptation of a theatre production, and nobody is particularly worth “rooting for”, but I liked it. It’s very bleak but the cast carry it well. Was a fan of Elizabeth Olsen pre Avengers, but she became a one not neurotic after. She’s probably the weakest here, there’s a fantastic turn by a very bitter Minnie Driver but Alicia vikander excels.

Overall, unless you find The Handmaids Tale a sitcom, I’d make sure you’re in a good place before watching. It may just make you think.
Definitely a marmite movie. Not just Margaret Atwood influenced but Ray Bradbury and others. Hated it myself. All the characters got on my tits. Elizabeth Olsen was awful. But others will love it.
 

Olsen just gets on my wick but it wasn’t a deal breaker.

Such a shame as she was class in Martha Marcy May Marlene.
That is actually a good reminder. Forgot how good that was. She must be talented just the part she played perhaps irritated me. You make good references to theatre though as I felt parts of the movie were Pinteresque. Still hated it but won't be surprised to see Vikander getting some award nominations.
 
The Amateur (2025)

Rami Malek is the tech expert out for revenge against the people who murdered his wife (Rachel Brosnahan). A good fit for Malek’s skills, he’s very good in this. Superb support from Laurence Fishburne, a well utilised and always fun to see Jon Bernthal, Julianne Nicholson and Holt McCallany. Plenty twists and turns. It reminds me in a lot of ways of the Bourne Supremacy. Shout out to the wardrobe department, there’s some excellent sweaters in this film!

7/10
 
The Amateur (2025)

Rami Malek is the tech expert out for revenge against the people who murdered his wife (Rachel Brosnahan). A good fit for Malek’s skills, he’s very good in this. Superb support from Laurence Fishburne, a well utilised and always fun to see Jon Bernthal, Julianne Nicholson and Holt McCallany. Plenty twists and turns. It reminds me in a lot of ways of the Bourne Supremacy. Shout out to the wardrobe department, there’s some excellent sweaters in this film!

7/10
Jon Bernthal resurgence starts here.
He’s in Daredevil at the minute and is in The Accountant 2 soon.
 
Got around to watching The Founder. Michael Keaton playing the arsehole “founder of McDonald’s “. I know it’ll be an adaptation of the truth but I’m fuming about what he did. 7/10.
 
Got around to watching The Founder. Michael Keaton playing the arsehole “founder of McDonald’s “. I know it’ll be an adaptation of the truth but I’m fuming about what he did. 7/10.
Have watched this 3 times over the years. Typical Keaton movie. Enjoyable ,good true story.
 
Black bag

I realise a few have watched this before me. I tight spy thriller in which good looking couples working for MI5 find themselves in the middle of a hunt for a traitor.

Short, taught, very good looking, but a bit empty

Well worth 90mins of your time
 
Anora.

Was canny.

Found the Russian kid unbearable, which I know was the point. It was just driven home a tad too aggressively for my liking.

Enjoyed it when the heavies showed up, but then I felt that went on and on for way too long……still good though.

I think almost every film is too long.
 
Finger Man (1955)

Feels like I have to give the background to this, because I didn’t initially watch it in the best of conditions. As usual, I typed ‘film noir’ into YouTube, and this entry came up.

It was bizarre. I’d only heard of one of the cast, from Kubrick films. The print was grainy and had a ridiculous amount of speckling on it. But worse was the sound. Every voice was absurdly deep. Women sounded like butch dock workers. Everyone else sounded like the electronic voice altering used by Schwarzenegger in True Lies when he’s interrogating Jamie Lee Curtis through the mirrored window. It meant that the whole film felt cheap and surreal to the point of being hilarious.

So after about half an hour of putting up with this shite, I had to quit out and search for just that film. A lovely clear widescreen print popped up, with normal voices, and a pre-title screen cast list. Including Frank Lovejoy and Forrest Tucker, whom I recognised from the previous attempt, but the fact they weren’t in the cast list made me doubt my own sanity.

Anyway, it’s a standard mob informant infiltration film, with the two leads putting in nice performances. Nothing special, but so much better watched properly. The vaseline-smeared interrogation-voice print completely ruined the atmosphere and tempo, so it was a relief to watch it properly.

I’ll be more discerning when looking at YouTube prints in future!

6/10
 
Anora.

Was canny.

Found the Russian kid unbearable, which I know was the point. It was just driven home a tad too aggressively for my liking.

Enjoyed it when the heavies showed up, but then I felt that went on and on for way too long……still good though.

I think almost every film is too long.
I thought it was terrible. Really don’t get the hype. I didn’t like any character in it.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top