Recent Viewing Part IV

I once chased the women of London to the tune of the Benny Hill theme on my kazoo (true story).

My sister's family will be in Cornwall at the same time.
When I was in London back then I listened to some Beatles music in front of Abbey Road studios, as probably millions of people have before me.

I have one. I ( we ) used to stay in St. John's Wood regularly and often walked past the crossing ( which I am led to believe is no longer in the precise place of the famous Beatles album ), we saw an opportunity with no one around and took a pic. The place is known as a nuisance to motorists because of its popularity to ( mostly ) idiotic tourists.

I'm not sure I can follow you, Pawel. They are often moving the zebra crossing away from the studio? Ever more far away?

It probably would be easier to move the studio away from the crossing. I strongly suspect, it's really a disguised alien space craft.

Warsaw 44 (Poland, 2014)

A film depicting the insurrection of the Polish underground army against the German occupation. Too much shaky camera for my taste but otherwise I found much to appreciate about the film. The one thing that took me out of the film was the score. A quirky mixture of source music, rocky electronics and - at least in one scene - totally anachronistic rock songs take the film to the brink of parody. I constantly thought what a really good film this would be if it had a decent score.
Pawel, you surely have seen the film? What do you think?

Volker

Terminator Genisys

An incredibly dumb film. The post-T2 sequels are a trilogy of lessons in how not to make sequels.

I kinda liked it. Yes, I see a few shortcomings, but IMO every installment in the TERMINATOR franchise (all five films, as well as the tv series) has been good.

Doesn't look that different from my own:

1. TERMINATOR 2
2. TERMINATOR
3. SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES
4. TERMINATOR 3
5. TERMINATOR 4
6. TERMINATOR 5

But as I said, I like all of them. Just because GENISYS comes in last in this ranking, doesn't mean I think it's bad. It's just the 'least good' of all films.

I totally disagree. You have to remember that the film was basically constructed around Arnold Schwarzenegger, taking into consideration his advanced age. As such, I thought the narrative premise was brilliantly done. OK, so it felt a bit rushed at times in its actual execution, but the basic idea was genius.

I also loved the way they recaptured the look of certain things, like the gorgeous, blue-tinted neon photography of the 80s sequence -- beautifully hommaging Adam Greenberg's work on the original.

Speaking of good hommaging, I like the weave of Hitchcock references running through ROGUE NATION.

My ranking would be similar. Terminator 2, in my opinion, is a textbook example of how to make a Hollywood action film.

However, I think I'd probably put Salvation ahead of #3, only because it finally gave us a glimpse of the wartorn future. But then, I hated #3. The most unrealistic portrayal of John Connor. And it was just cheesy as fuck. Hate the tone of the entire film. Salvation tried too hard but at least it felt grim. Which it should.

Arnie is so much better as a villain.

I rather enjoyed Salvation (for much the same reason Lee gave), but for the rest... Terminator 2, while still the best of the sequels, still annoyed the f*ck out of me because of three reasons: 1) the sheer silly amount of violence (roughly 90% of the film is spent on firing as many different weapons as much as possible, without much sense or reason), 2) Arnie needing to be a "good guy" Terminator. Yecccch. 3) It basically invalidates the excellent, really dark ending of the original Terminator.

Rise Of The Machines was just ridiculous with a villain about as menacing as a cuddly kitten. (Seriously guys, if you're gonna do a Terminatrix, instead of popping silly eye-candy like this maybe rather try for something like this to be effective?).
Really, the only thing it got right was setting the world up for destruction again.

Sadly The Sarah Connor Chronicles series was canceled before getting to a satisfactory resolution, but it was a very good series, well acted, really focused on the plight of someone continuously on the run (and successfully creating a highly paranoid mood). Good cast too. Lena Haedey really shone in that one, and Summer Glau, while still suffering from the 'Kristinna Loken' effect, nevertheless made a pretty darn disturbing robot.