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Here's a Recommended Movie with a difference....

In the late 1980s, a friend & I rented the VHS of The Lighthorsemen from our local video rental store. It's a rousing (true story) Australian WW1 film set in what was then Palestine, featuring an amazing and very heroic finale. After watching it we both agreed that "we should honour those soldiers", or something like that. So not long after, a group 6 of us dressed in dinner jackets, drew on outrageous WWI style moustaches with a girlfriend's mascara pencil and sat down to a fine meal of beef wellington. At the start of the meal we raised a toast to "The Lighthorsemen" with a glass of port with a raw egg cracked into it.

Fairly silly stuff from a group of 20-something males you might think, but the amazing thing is that 30 years later, we're still meeting. There were a few personnel changes in the early years but the core remained & it's been the same group now for 15 years or so, and the doors are now closed. We still wear dinner jackets, still wear outrageous drawn-on moustaches and still toast with port & raw egg. It's become a cornerstone of my life & of the other 5 guys, it is the only time that I see 4 of them. We take it in turn to host the event & this year will see the 2nd continental event as the others travel out to my place; a great honour.

As for the film, we used to watch it every year but that soon stopped. About a year ago I bought the Bluray (Australian import I think) & watched it again for the first time in probably 20 years & loved it all over again. I'd recommend it to anybody who enjoys WWI films although I can't promise that it will affect your life the way it's affected mine!

I think we are allowing TV series in this section?

Anyhow "The Expanse", a US sci-fi series available in the UK via Amazon Prime, is worth a view for the soundtrack and visuals.

The black space and white glowing stars are spectacular on a large screen. Scenes with space walks, especially away from planets or space stations, are genuinely unsettling in the way they convey isolation and distance. The soundtrack is nicely balanced with plenty of deep bass in space flight scenes and lots of subtle surround ambience in on-board scenes.

The story is slow to start, with lots of character and environment establishing, and it was not until the third episode that I got into it. The second series starts slowly too but builds to quite a climax.

Recommended as a sort of latter day "Blakes 7" but without Avon's dry wit though there is a hint of Servalan.

Totally agree, also got my recommendation a few posts up. Looking forward to season 4 coming later this year.

"The Expanse" S3E7 - that opening scene with "Highway Star" as the soundtrack was an absolute hoot

He found out about the speed limit the hard way . I’m currently enjoying Ramin Djawadi’s excellent GoT season 8 soundtrack.

Into The Wild

+1.

Great film, great music and a great book to boot. Written by the same bloke that wrote Into Thin Air which got me into mountaineering literature & formed the basis of the recent Everest film, which is also great.

+1 regarding the book!

Must nominate the truly silly "6 Underground" on Netflix for its use of the THX Deep Note as a weapon. 🤣

I saw recently that this was Netflix's 2nd or 3rd most-watched film of the last year so thought it might be worth a punt, particularly after seeing it recommended on here, so I gave it a shot.

It's very mixed; the opening 20 minutes is brilliant & hilarious in equal measure, the photography is beautiful & it's easy to see where every dollar of the $150 Million budget was spent, but it's also pretty dumb for most of its run-time. I think IMDb's composite score of 6.1 is about right.

In stark contrast, we watched The Irishman last night & that is worthy of all the plaudits being rained upon it. There's such a depth of acting talent on display, to such mesmeric effect, that even at close to 3hrs 20 it doesn't lag for a second.

The Hero. Another gem plucked from Netflix's generous offering. It's a little like The Straight Story (utter magic) in that's it's a gentle, slowly-paced film, powered along by a brilliant central performance, Sam Elliot's in this case. If you can watch the first 30 seconds and not instantly love the film, you're a better man than I am, Gunga Din.

I see I'm the first to contribute to this thread for almost a year, since, er, me!

We watched The Dig last night on Netflix & it's a great little film. Terrific acting from Ralph Feinnes & Carey Mulligan in the leads, lovely photography & a very gentle, English film. It tells a fantastic story too.