I watched 'The Motorcycle Diaries' tonight. Great cinematography but did get a little bored. Re-watched Frankenhooker as well. Crap cinematography but didn't get bored once. I lone Henenlotter. The dirty bastard. |
To please my Predator-obsessed girlfriend I bought a box-set of the AvP films, which she has never seen. I put on the first AvP: Alien Vs Predator and selected the "Extended Version" which I had never seen before. I thoroughly enjoyed it! Previously I had thought it an OK action film that wasted some time well enough, but this time I really got into it! I ended up thinking I probably prefer it to the rather up-its-own-arse Alien: Resurrection. I am planning on buying the Alien Tetralogy set soon to re-evaluate them as well! |
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Just watched Night of the Demons last night, was enjoyable but not that great overall. Was fun and kept me entertained overall. Also watched Planet Terror again and was as awesome as last 2 times I saw it :lol:. I love that movie. |
I thought Frontières had something lacking. For me it got a bit lost in its attempt to balance exploitation with serious political comment. I liked it, but thought it wore its flaws more obviously than and was not in the same league as Martyrs, Ils or Haute Tension. Not seen À l'intérieur yet, but may watch it today and tell you what I think. |
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I'm sure you'll really enjoy Inside! |
I loved Ils, though I do appreciate the "cliché" criticism - I've read it in others' reviews too. There's just something about the set-up and the short, sharp execution (a film that runs under 80 minutes in the 21st century!!! More of this please!) that chilled me to the marrow. The "under siege in a penetrable building" scenario is a meme that almost always wins me over be it Ils, Night Of The Living Dead, Rio Bravo or whatever! I am also fond of the "psycho kids" thing. |
Ills was awesome too and for me best french horror is Haute Tension. |
OK, so I watched it: À l'intérieur/Inside The film did not take the angle I thought it would, being a straight on horror flick rather than a crime/horror film investigating the rare but real crime of Foetal Theft. I say "straight on" horror film, but it isn't so simple. It is quite arty in its intents and quests to rise above the usual stalk'n'slash gorefest which it at first resembles. [spoiler] It starts very much laden with the influence of David Cronenberg, in my opinion, both visually and thematically: washed out colours, steely blues and greys, autumnal shadows, fear of the flesh and changes of the body through either injury or pregnancy and so on. However, this all turns about as The Maniac gets in the house. The film then becomes a very harsh exercise in claustrophobic horror - the small house offering little in the way of refuge or safety mirroring the (on-screen) trials of the foetus in its by now cramped uterine home being bashed about by injury and rapid movement. This works very effectively, in my opinion, and you spend the last hour or so of the film longing for space and the ability to take a deep breath! It's been a while since I saw a horror film so efficiently depict spatial constraint in this way. Beatrice Dalle is quite superb as The Maniac - a wronged woman driven insane by the loss of her strived for baby. Hers is a performance of cold malice and laothing, yet with some vulnerability and pain evident. One of the best performances as The Psycho in a slasher filme, well, ever! The film is mostly relentless in its pacing, but does feel a little stretched and overlong. The idea would have been an explosive hour but even 80 minutes feels too much. You can't help but think that towards the end it starts repeating itself or is unnecessarily pponderous in its camera moves just to stretch it all out to feature length. This is not a major problem, but it's one that struck me. I found À l'intérieur to be a powerful film, and it is one I am glad to have finally seen. In regards its place amongst the so-called "New French Horroer" or whatever, I would rate it as one of the best. Martyrs still edges it on account of its almost surreal aspects of cosmic horror, but I'd hold À l'intérieur up as a pretty close second alongside and possibly above Haute Tension. I reckon it is going to be one of those films that haunts you long after the viewing. We shall see. [/spoiler] |
I love (or not) "Inside". I think it's stunningly nasty, bleak and uncompromising and is just kick in the head intense. I'd rate it easily above (****ed itself up its own arse ending) "Haute", much better than "Frontiers" (though I did like that) and even above "Martyrs" (as I for one don't rate the final part of it that compared to the superb rest of it). "Paintball" http://www.beardyfreak.com/rvpaint.php A group of multi-national thrill seekers are blindfolded and dumped in the woods to take part in an extreme paintball campaign against another, unseen, team. Suddenly one of the team is shot not by a paint pellet, but by a bullet. Fleeing from the now lethal fire the team, with no idea where they are, must fight for their lives before it’s game over for all of them…. First things first. “Paintball” (a Spanish production, though filmed in English) blasts off right into the action as soon as it starts. Initially we're thrown right into the chaotic, frenzied paintball game (which is actually rather fun to watch and here played with some amazingly fancy looking guns) which 10 minutes later slams us into the ‘real threat’ part of the movie and it literally never lets up again until the end credits. Thankfully the screenplay manages to deliver a distinctive bunch of characters who are all well acted by the cast who all manage to sketch their roles out despite the endless fleeing, fighting and dying. This is also a well crafted bunch of people. Most of the team are very driven, they have never met each other before and suddenly they find themselves being hunted by an unseen enemy of unknown origin and number. As such their is almost no team aesthetic here. They argue, they back-bite, they betray and they do all they can to personally survive. It's a bleak sketch of humanity, but to me it rings totally true for such a situation. The killer's POV is the major idea highlight in the film. The killer wears thermal imaging goggles which give the scenes a bright white/grey look, which in of itself is not unique or that stunning. But the way it’s used here is very clever and visually important to the movies entire aesthetic make-up. The film is pretty violent in general, but the real nasty, messy, kills are shot POV through the thermal goggles, as such we can still make out the nastiness happening but it now has a unique feel. The way such scenes now look, the way the bright white blood outrageously shoots and spurts out of people for example, is really memorable. But the best use of the killer's thermal imagery is when it’s used to reveal things we (or the other characters) can't see. There are two superb ‘thermal reveal’ scenes, but the best is the first and it's a really effective surprise and such a great visual trick. The movies only real problems come in the plotting of the main set-up. The first ‘thermal reveal’ scene also reveals more of what is happening plot wise, and although it’s a different slant on the idea, we have been here before. The, rather low key, finale is also a bit of a mess even if it still works. This is where the plot unravels as we now have a couple of holes left unfilled (though you can sort of fill them yourself if you think outside the screenplay). This confusion is made annoying by the fact there was no need for it, as without the final moments all was fine and the film had reached a perfectly fine conclusion. So be prepared to feel a bit at a loss and a bit unsatisfied as the credits roll, but thankfully it's not a movie destroying problem by any means and the rest is so fun, tense, well staged, visually clever, and just violent and bloody enough, to ensure a real good time is had. |
Watched Inglorious BastArds earlier tonight again - luv that film. Also watched Happy Birthday To Me for the first ever time! It was a lot of fun with some VERY inventive deaths, yet avoided becoming purely about the gore which was a nice change. The twist at the end though - wow! What a twist! I hear that the DVD version I saw had a completly different musical score, which is a shame - but for £2 I can't really complain TOO much. http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51N333O1MDL.jpghttp://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41FRFCVEM2L.jpg |
Just watched: Creepshow 2 - a bit of fun but nothing special. Staunton Hill - I was bloody surprised at how much I really liked this film. Bought it for 3 quid in HMV and it was worth every penny and even more. I really wasn't expecting much but it was actually a well directed, well acted and gory piece of film making. Some lovely camera work and well edited parts throughout. The gory death scenes were just great, really realistic. A great use of prosthetics and no sign of CGI anywhere which was brilliant (take note of your son's work George and learn something for your next film) Sorry was that too harsh? Love you George, honestly! Anyway, I'd recommend this film to any horror film fan and I'd suggest you keep an eye out for Cameron cos if he continues to make films as good as this then I'm happy to call myself a fan. |
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Really?! Not heard anything else good about it, but you paint a convincing argument for giving this a try. My only worry is that you also called "Creepshow 2" 'A bit of fun', instead of 'A load of shit".:biggrin: |
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This was the second 'X' certificate film I saw at the flicks back in 1981. Curiously it was doubled with Day Of The Animals. |
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As for Staunton though, it really wasn't bad at all. Don't know why it got slated. I don't get what some people want from it. It's flawed yes but I'm not looking for a masterpiece, I'm looking for some gory enjoyment which is exactly what I received. Watch it but don't blame me if you don't like it, although I know we both really enjoyed Hush and that got slated too :biggrin: |
Arachnophobia Nice to see this again. A decent Hollywood effort from the Spielberg factory (certainly better than pretty much anything Spielberg himself has directed since 1978!). Spider films are always fun and this is a well done, unpretentious addition to the genre. John Goodman makes me laugh. The BBC seemed to braodcast this at a low bitrate for some reason though - lots of blocky artifacts, alas. |
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I still dont own it though, am hopin they release a Bluray of it soon. |
1 Attachment(s) Footprints - I'll keep this short. Stunning. How come I've never seen this little gem before? .......and it's a Shameless release. :banana: |
1 Attachment(s) watched a pretty decent teen prison flick yesterday called Boot Camp with Mila Kunis and Peter Stormare, it was pretty cool. it's out on monday and worth checking out, plus you see a bit of Mila Kunis Side boobage (bonus) this is not the UK dvd in the picture... |
re: What films have you seen recently? just watched Train - a Hostel rip off...you guessed it - set on train. Not to bad with some decent gore and another good advertisement for eastern Europe. Sent from my HTC Hero using Tapatalk |
Watched Saw 6 last night. After all the slagging off it got, I was expecting it to be terrible, but I rather enjoyed it! Unfortunately the traps were a bit unimaginative and predictable. But then again after 6 films, the viewer becomes a little more astute to them. |
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Then again in my post above, I did watch Saw 6! Not quite torture porn but a bit samey nonetheless. |
Theatre Of Blood Hammy Shakespearean actor Vincenzo Price is so disappointed to not receive the 1972 Actors Award for his season of The Bard that he throws himself from the balcony of Jeffrey Archer's apartment in Peninsula Heights (Lord Jeff wasn't there at the time as he was detained elsewhere, probably in Wandsworth) into the Thames. However all is not lost. Vinnie develops a brief taste for metholated spirits (about 6 secs) after submerging at the Thames Lock in Brentford, and sets about repaying his critics in assortedly bloody ways while dressing up in strange garments. In the spate of 100 mins he becomes..... Caesar A policeman Achilles A gravedigger Arviragus A surgeon An expert fencer Shylock Richard III A masseuse with a ropey accent (think it's Welsh crossed with Swedish) A camp hairdresser called Butch (one of the greatest images in horror ever) A chef Eat your heart out Mike Yarwood. :cool: Delightful, delicious, delectable and dedicated daughter Diana Rigg (who possesses much M-appeal) also dresses up. Mostly in a heavy beard (which makes her look like a member of ZZ Top) but also in a miniskirt and white go-go boots (to which I drooled uncontrollably and went -> http://www.mysmiley.net/imgs/smile/love/love0010.gif for several hours). A cast to die for (and most of them do), Milo O'Shea & Eric Sykes as the dumbest cops in London ("What's the next murder, Inspector?"), an outstanding Michael J Lewis score, some surprisingly graphic murders, splendid location work, and a pie to equal anything made by Ginsters. For me this is a perfect film, and still remains one of the greatest British (or anywhere) horror movies of all time. Horror with a genuine & knowing sense of fun. Something rarely seen in recent years. Now I might go for a haircut. Something in flame with ash highlights...... :laugh: |
Watched the classic Fright Night yesterday. I heard alot of good things about it and as its getting a remake, I thought il check it out. It had its funny moments and was pretty good overall. I would have liked it to be 10 mins shorter though as I lost interest during the end. |
"The land that Time Forgot" This long time fave and ever popular title still holds up today. The dino FX are cheesy, as are some of the model effects...But some of the model work is okay and the film is packed with great images and spectacle. I remembered about the end as far as the fate of 2 characters was concerned (something that would lead onto the less successful sequel and make it even bleaker than it already is) but I forgot what happened to everyone else. Man, this has to be one of the darkest, dour and grim children/family films around. They don't make family films like this now...especially ones with child pleasing monster action. All of these 'Amicus but not' Kevin Connor films had a slightly dark edge to them ("At the Earth's Core" was much lighter in tone than "Land" but had some pretty violent moments and multipe deaths for a kids film), but here the entire film is dark. The first 30 minutes is simply a very cold-blooded, serious, war film with plentiful deaths. The monster part of the film is equally as serious in how it is played, the dinosaur scenes are often a bit bloody and not done as thrilling spectacle...more like constant death and warfare that matches the existence of the human characters. Basically a whole hell of a lot of people die (often at the hands of other people, even stone age people) by being shot, beaten, stabbed, hacked and chewed. It all ends on such a ferociously nihilistic, doom-laden, note that you have to wonder how well kiddies slept in 1975 after seeing it! Generally good stuff, with a good cast all in fine form and packed with incident and spectacle..but amazingly not that much actual fun at the end of the day. |
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I was just going to ask if Doug McCLure was in that? :suspicious: |
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Looking back, and just how bad they really look, I reckon they must have all been the Saturday matinee movies ..... ah memories! Even if they are bad, it doesn't make em any less fun!:dance: |
"Land" is damn downbeat fun though. |
Yesterday's movie marathon consisted of; FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET-One of Argento's best,now that I've sat and watched it-that ending is the operatic of macabre! ABSOLUTION-Interesting little thriller with a nice twist at the end. Transfer was crap though. VIGILANTE-Still disturbing..... INVASION USA and CODE OF SILENCE-A cheesy Chuck double bill to finish off the day! IUSA-Is preposterous!:lol: |
is that vigilante the robert Forster film, if so, where d'ya get it cause ive been after that film for years... |
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"Welcome to Fright Night!......For real." |
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I saw it on the cinema when it was first released. Like The Lost Boys it's dated quite a lot now but it still has its charm. Sarandon & McDowall are brilliant. The sequel was absolutely chronic. :ack: |
Yeah I heard part 2 was bad so wont bother seeing it :lol: |
Had a double bill round a mate's house last night! His pick was Dans Ma Peau (In My Skin) - first time I had ever seen it and had no idea what to expect. It was a very interesting film to say the least - VERY slow at first - but then becomes very twisted and bizarre. I can see how people may connect this to Cronenberg but I don't think it's as re-watchable as his work. Then it was my pick! - I choose D'Amato's Beyond The Darkness which he had never seen. I really like this film; the gore is VERY releastic, the story is brilliantly odd and it has many many tense moments in there. Unfortionatly, I began to spot the flaws in the story etc with this viewing, but I don't really care about those. It's a great film! |
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It's been a while since I posted to this thread, but here is a very rapid update of what I've been watching the last couple of weeks... Jungle Holocaust: One of my favourite cannibal films, and one that I hadn't visited in a long while. The Escapees: Very underated and obscure film by Jean Rollin which tells the tale of two girls on the run from a mental institution. There is a cameo by the gorgeous Brigitte Lahaie too - which is always a bonus. Hell of the Living Dead: Bruno Mattei's (AKA Vincent Dawn ;)) cheesy zombie masterpiece. Very silly, but great fun all the same. Vampyres: Joseph Larraz's erotic vampire yarn. Pretty solid stuff and one of the better British erotic vampire films, imo. Certainly better than Hammer's Lust for a Vampire anyway... :rolleyes: :biggrin: The Toolbox Murders: Nowhere near the quality of Ferrara's similarly themed and later effort: The Driller Killer imo, but still an essential slice of '70s schlock cinema. I'd completely forgotten Cameron Mitchell was in it though... The Curse of Frankenstein: Probably my favourite Hammer Frankenstein film, and even though Lee's talents are err... criminally under-used (;)), Cushing is on top form as always and shows everyone why he was the definitive Baron Frankenstein. Bloody Reunion (Seuseung-ui eunhye): Pretty decent Korean revenge/slasher/serial killer flick. I'd never seen this before and some good gore, an interesting story, and a few twists made this enjoyable. La morte vivante (The Living Dead Girl): One of my favourite Rollin films, and a must watch for anyone even remotely into the erotic vampire genre. As usual, with Rollin the cinematography is excellent, but is less dreamy and surreal than much of his other work. Nude for Satan (Nuda per satana): A surreal mind-f*ck of a film, but highly engaging (imo). Watch out for Rita Calderoni getting 'sexually assaulted' by the most fake looking giant spider ever seen too... :biggrin: Black Demons: I'd never seen this before, but I was impressed with the suspense created by Lenzi, and the voodoo take on the zombie uprising, complete with disfigured, shackled, undead slaves. I was disappointed with the lack of gore and zombie attacks though. Apart from two deliciously gross eyeball extraction scenes it was pretty bloodless; the zombies even backed off (willingly :confused:) from the attack at times... pretty good overall though. As you can see, I have too much free time on my hands. :tongue1: |
I thought Black Demons was awful. Lenzi's worst film IMO. |
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