What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Prince_Vajda

As you've mentioned their names - Boll's movies are a lot more entertaining than von Trier's!

Greetings!

I like several of Uwe's films - Bloodrayne, Bloodrayne The Third Reich, Far Cry and In the Name of the King.

[Make Them Die Slowly]

Big Foot mayhem with "Night of the Demon" yesterday. Vastly better than I remember from seeing it in the early 80s. Loved the whole religious cult plot twist.

[bdc]

Watched more HK goodies...

Fatal Vacation (1990)
Entertaining action thriller involving a group of HK tourists that are taken hostage by revolutionaries in the Philippines.
This once again proves that HK residents should better stay in Hong Kong.

Here's the trailer (which boasts it's the director's first "serious" film! ):



The Imp (1981)
Straightforward horror (no comedy!) that tries a somewhat different approach.
Not bad all.
Btw I watched this on vcd and will be revisiting this soon when the remastered dvd arrives.

Holy Weapon (1993)
What can I say...very entertaining mix of "modern wuxia",comedy and gender bending to the extreme!
Why hasn't this been released on dvd?

The "Spider Ninja":

[PaulD]

Watched Red Hill last night. Really enjoyed it. Had a beautiful setting and some excellent performances (including Harold's son from Neighbours!) although the script was incredibly cliched (all that typical stuff about not shooting the gun) and predictable overall. Still a well-made film that I'd definitely watch again, perhaps even with the director's commentary.

[platostotal]

Watched Q THE WINGED SERPENT on AB dvd, good film, but watched it with Larry Cohen's commentary track, WOW... a good film is now a great one. Filming right at the top of New York's Chrysler building(without permission) with Carradine and Moriarty really up there 88 stories up, listening to Cohen's affection for the film and it's cast is a joy(and he has some real advice for aspiring film makers)and puts it right up there in fave dvd extras. As you can can pick it up for £3, gotta be a must have.

[Frankie Teardrop]

MISINFORMATION - Baron Mordant's excavation / interrogation of the BFI tape archive. Features public information films transformed by the addition of Mordant's own music, which in most cases replaces the original soundtracks. Some truly sublime stuff here - a featurette about town planning opens a window onto a whole other reality when spliced with coruscating Whitehouse style power electronics, conjuring a grey hell of spectral modernity. Elsewhere,in a particularly unnerving section, the removal of the voice over of an educational film about ancient druidic stones (can't remember whether it was Stonehenge or not) allows the stones themselves to seem to glow with an eerie sentience. Lots of other interesting snippets, including a fairly well known Peter Greenaway word processor commercial. I thought this was pretty amazing, at least in places. Well worth hunting down if you're into Mordant Music, the grim 70s, surreal found footage or plain weird shit. Another BFI release, STOP, LOOK, LISTEN! contains a whole host of similarly depressing-inspiring clips from the seventies and eighties, including the infamous 'Lonely Waters' and 'Apaches'.

[iluvdvds@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Make Them Die Slowly

Big Foot mayhem with "Night of the Demon" yesterday. Vastly better than I remember from seeing it in the early 80s. Loved the whole religious cult plot twist.

If I could give you a million likes I would! Bigfoot films rule - anyone who watches them also rules.

[Frankie Teardrop]

Yeah, speaking of Q - THE WINGED SERPENT, it's a film I also watched recently and liked (have vague memories of seeing it on TV when I was 7 or 8 and being mildly traumatised by the window cleaner decap). I enjoyed the ambitious low rent stop motion animation, but most of all I was impressed by Michael Moriarty who gives a great performance which at times feels like it's drifted in from some downtown art theatre. I like Larry Cohen in general, but quite often find his films leave me wanting something more.
On the other hand, I couldn't ask for more than NIGHT OF THE DEMON. It's a complete universe unto itself. I'd been waiting for ages for the Code Red, and wasn't disappointed. It drifts a bit in places, but it just oozes that inexplicable vibe you want from exploitation films of that era - cheap and vile, but (or, therefore) addictive. You just wouldn't get that slow motion finale in a film these days - more's the pity.

[Gojirosan]

Don't Open Till Christmas - inspired by the thread about the film, I finally watched this. It's a mess, but not without its charm. Great sleazy atmosphere of scumbag blokes, rough women and general early 80s ugliness.

The seeds of a good film are there, and I was surprise at how "Gialloesque" it is in story and style. I had always thought it was more a UK attempt at a post-Halloween slasher (though the electronic score tries very hard to evoke Halloween throughout!). It feels far more 70s than 80s despite the tell tale fashions revealing the true date.

The pacing is all over the place, there are scenes with tragically audible camera noise and the entire production was clearly rushed and under-funded. They neglected to write a proper ending also. By far the worst element is a strange and strained Santa stalking sequence in London Dungeon that seems at odds with the style of the rest of the film. It is inadvertently funny, painfully amateurish (even compared to the rest!) and really shouldn't have made the final cut.

I am not sure why I liked this film as much as I did as it has so much wrong with it. But like it I did.

[keirarts]

Rented a bunch of discs from work on friday, would have posted sooner but for the second time in the last couple of months we have some high winds and rain and my phone line has completely died so I'm up at my mums playing catch up!

Cell 211. A spanish prison riot thriller about a soon to be father getting caught up in a prison riot on his first day on the job as a guard. In order to survive he pretends to be a convict while trying to find a way out. A brutal and brilliant slice of entertainment from spain and WELL worth watching. The americans are already remaking this so check it out quickly!

Project nim. Genuinely brilliant documentary on the chimpanzee nim chimpsky who was taken from his mother at birth and raised in a human family as a behavioural science experiment looking at the nature/nurture argument. Funny and heartbreaking I rate this up there with senna as one of last years best documentaries. Made by the same people who did Man on wire.

Arena. Brutal, idiotic, cliche ridden fun! A fireman/paramedic gets kidnapped and forced to participate in a brutal bloodsport for online entertainment. Nothing you wont have seen before, and done much better in the steve austin starrer the condemmed, Arena is still an entertaining slice of DTV shlock for anyone after a no-brainer.

Colombiana. Slicker than arena (thanks to the great directorial work done from oliver megaton) yet just as cliche-ridden and predictable. Clombiana is pretty much what you'd expect straight from the get go. Tortured assasin, hunky yet sensetive love intrest, driven cop as adversary ect ect.. Worth checking out.

Overall the best film was cell 211 closely followed by project nim.