What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Beyond72

Not a firm favourite or anything, but I'm glad I took a chance and picked up the DVD all the same. It was worth it just for George 'Buck' Flower alone.

Its dirt cheap to pick up and worth a place in any slasher collection.

Yeah George was great, i missed mentioning that in my scribbles.

[nekromantik]

Just seen the Michael Biehn directed and produced flick The Victim.

Now its a good effort for his first feature but in the end I thought it was ok nothing great.
The main issues were budget and script. I thought the script was really quite bad and the acting from his wife was very bland and not very good. The movie is a ok watch and at times is fun but if these issues were not there it might have become a very good indie thriller!

[bdc]

Shaolin vs. Evil Dead (2004)

Ok mostly old school style HK horror with a very abrupt ending.
The film starts with a corpse drive btw.
The cgi is incorporated surprisingly well most of the time.



Shaolin vs. Evil Dead 2: Ultimate Power (2005-6?)

Bizarre sequel/prequel which seems to be happening in a parallel universe?
This is more of a very mediocre wuxia style film with some fantasy/horror elements.
It also completely ditches the comedy from "part 1".
Mostly unconnected to the first film imho (except from some characters popping up in both films).

Incidentally both films look like an old tv series on the dvd's although they seem to have been shot on 35 mm and have "below average" pic quality...

[mercury]

The Devil's Backbone
Superman

[SShaw]

Started the weekend on Friday with the Bluray of Missing in Action III, yesterday I watched Arrows very nice DVD of Combat Shock (awesome) and Elfie Hopkins on Bluray (dull, dull, dull) and then to wrap up the weekend the Bluray of Martyrs (excellent).

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Swept Away (2002)

This isn't really as bad a film as made out. It certainly isn't Guy Ritchie's worst film for a start. (step forward Revolver).

The problem i have with Swept Away is that tonally its all over the place as glorified by the performance of its two leads Madonna and Adriano Giannini. The films opening half hour is centered around their relationship on a luxury yacht. Madonna playing the diva 'ish guest and Giannini the crew member. She treats him like a lowly servant and isn't particularly pleasent to him or any of the other guests on the ship, but its all done with a sparkle of humour and witty dialogue.

Once the same two are marooned on the island the roles are reversed. Unfortunately this is where the tone shifts. Giannini is frankly nasty and frequently hits, kicks and pushes her around in a pretty unsavoury manner, not to mention nearly raping her. The script suddenly becomes devoid of any humour and any sympathy you originally had for the put upon servant is quickly lost and replaced with loathing.

Then the tone shifts again with twenty minutes to go as a daft montage appears to show the characters falling in love, and when they are eventually saved and reunited with their loved ones, then Ritchie adds a lost love aspect to the film in a "will they won't they" be reunited scenario reminiscent of all the best rom-coms.

Had Swept Away been solely a comedy it had all the potential of classic Hollywood fare where opposites attract such as The African Queen. Its shifts in tone do tend to make the viewer feel like they are watching three films jumbled together and is ultimately the reason it fails.

[fuzzymctiger]

Originally Posted by James Morton

BEHIND THE MASK - THE RISE OF LESLIE VERNON
boring crap and overrated

Couldn't agree more. My brother loved it though.

[Daemonia]

Originally Posted by mercury

Holocaust 2000.......not that great unless you want to see Kirk Douglas run about naked

Yes....but....he becomes a hippy at the end living in the desert. It scores points with me for that alone.

[Frankie Teardrop]

Originally Posted by Slippery Jack

Red White and Blue

Let down by the final act I thought, when it descended into standard revenge territory. But genuinely surprising twists and turns for the most part, with an excellent cast - well directed by Simon Rumley, a big improvement on his The Living and the Dead . . .

I agree with the above, with the caveat that, when the final swerve into brute revengefest happens, it's dealt with in harsher and more uncomfortable terms than would be the case with more obviously mainstream takes on similar territory. Thinking about it, I actually quite like the sense of something more akin to an 'art movie' giving way to genre / exploitation, which is essentially what happens here. Overall though, it's just a really great, fractured portrait of latter day alienation.

Inspired by 'Red White and Blue', I went on to seek out his other recentish one, THE LIVING AND THE DEAD. Disagree slightly with the above, I thought TLATD was really good, a pretty ghastly experimental melodrama which reeked of sickness and malaise, despite some grating performances (not Trigger, he was great!) and editing choices. In another time and place, it could've been the work of a more cinematically competent and spatially aware Andy Miligan, at least in terms of the level of intra-familial bile on show (OK, there's obviously a sadness and a tenderness at work which would never figure in AM's approach). The setting, a derelict mansion, was as powerful as the stench of rotting flowers, and the whole concoction seethed with barely contained rage and desperation. Wildly eccentric cinema, especially for the UK, and as such worthy of praise IMO.

Also watched THE AGGRESSION SCALE. I thought it was a satisfying horror / thriller, albeit nothing special. The idea of a 'Home Alone'-type foray into extreme violence is weirdly intuitive, given the cartoonish aspect of the latter - this film partially delivers, but could've gone further. That said, the depiction of an autistic-seeming kid as a silent, well drilled killing machine was very disturbing, and the film played up the tension stakes well once it got going.
Also on my shitlist was CREATURE, which I approached with no expectations after reading rank reviews and purchasing on a drunken whim. It's OK, a cross between backwoods horror and old school monster pic. It doesn't break any new ground, but I had a better time with it than I thought I would. On the plus side, there are dubious undercurrents involving incest and monster-sex... on the minus, a reluctance to really pursue these aspects, and an annoying tendency to cut away from the splatter scenes it constantly builds up to (more for budgetary reasons than anything else, I think). Weirdly enough, the one image that really sticks in my mind is that of an insect crawling from the mouth of a dead girl... wish the whole film had been like that.

[gag]

Originally Posted by Daemonia

Yes....but....he becomes a hippy at the end living in the desert. It scores points with me for that alone.

It on horror channel sometime within the next week,