What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[pedromonkey]

last few films viewed....

KILLER JOE
Absolutely loved every single second of this southern Film noir. The film features not 1, not 2 but 5 stand performances most notably Gina Gershon, Juno Temple and Matthew McConoughey in a rare bad guy role. Goes insanely dark in the final 20 minutes and shows that William Friedkin can still make a better film than 90% of people who call themselves 'Directors'. Definite must see.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER
Again an extremely satisfying watch. Full of action and American history. Some great visuals and some good performances. Never knew politics was this interesting. Recommended.

COCKNEY'S VS ZOMBIES
Pretty much does what it says on the tin. Very funny zombie comedy from the writer of Severance. Very gory, proper shufflers and very cockney. Richard Brier's being chased by a horde of the undead is one of the highlights of the year. Recommended.

SUMMER WARS
Anime from the director of The Girl Who Leapt through time. Stunning animation and very well thought out script about a super computer network that runs everything until a rogue A.I infiltrates and starts messing things up. Also a very sweet film. Highly Recommended.

CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF
Pretty atmospheric Hammer Horror from Terrance fisher with some bang on Make up work on Olly Reed for his transformation, has a very sinister tone from the start and for a film made in 1961 contains a fair amount of Gore. Defo worth a purchase...

MARDOCK SCRAMBLE
No faults on the animation at all, but for someone not familiar with the source novel, i had no idea what the **** was going on. At 65 mins long the pacing was a mess and needed to be at least 90-100 mins. Film finished on a cliffhanger so gonna have to watch the second one soon.

THE DEVIL RIDES OUT
Good Hammer horror with a rare good guy Role for Christopher Lee. All Round eerie atmosphere and good performances and good direction from Terrance Fisher as usual. Would like to see what the Blu-ray looks like.

LOOPER
Very well made science fiction thriller with a well written example of time travel that is very easy to follow. Some good performances from Both Willis and Gordon-Levitt but suffers from some familiarity when it comes to plot. All round good film that was more fun and interesting than Prometheus.

RED TAILS
While the film boasts some brilliant CG Dogfights, the rest of the film over uses the format and the dramatic story driven elements fall a little flat, Some of the performances are good but not all. As an action adventure it's fun if a tad overlong. As a portrayal of a moment in history it's a bit of missed opportunity. The film is the feature debut of TV director Anthony Hemingway who cut his teeth directing gritty HBO shows like The Wire, True Blood and Treme but there is no grit or realism to Red Tails, this is probably it's biggest downfall. In the hands of a more experienced director like Spielberg or Scorsese, Red Tails could have been brilliant. It also doesn't help that the screenplay was written by comedy writer and a comic book writer/anime writer, who have near to no grasp on human drama. The biggest and laziest problem for me was the opening titles. The Red Tales Logo it's self was ok only for the following titles to all be done in the Arial black font which just made the film's opening look like some cheap DTV action flick. But aside from the major problems the film suffers from it's still an entertaining boys own adventure. For a better arial based war flick from the last few years, i highly recommend WW1 film FLYBOYS, or the 1995 HBO movies, The Tuskegee Airmen. You could probably give this one a miss.

THE STICK UP
Smartly plotted Crime thriller from Roadhouse director Rowdy Herrington. Good performances all round, James Spader is great in these understated roles. A brilliant crime caper and an undiscovered gem of a film.

CHERNOBYL DIARIES
Rubbish horror film which is not only badly made but also quite distasteful. Avoid.

PIRANHA 3DD
What the **** is this supposed to be? a horror film or a porn movie?. I really enjoyed the first Piranha 3D as Alexandre Aja took the gore and tongue in cheek humour and made a funny little horror flick. This sequel which runs a total of 83mins is 'directed' by John Gulager, a man who made his name of the fairly bad taste horror trilogy Feast, which to be honest, although not in the same league as most modern horror films were still an enjoyable enough trilogy. Her he seems to have developed what can only be described in medical terms as horny middle aged man syndrome because with in the first 10 minutes we get not 1 but 2 butt naked women that the camera just lears at. Now i'm all for a nice naked lady but not in a motion picture where they're portrayed as sex objects, porn is for that, the film is just a piece of trash cinema and not the good type of trash. Avoid this film and watch some real ****ing porn instead.

UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: DAY OF RECKONING
a brilliant sci-fi horror action thriller drama with some blistering fight scenes and a good intelligent script, probably one of the best action films of the year.
Completely takes you away from the usual smash bang wallop of the previous films for an almost surreal journey into hell. Scott Adkins better start getting major roles after this. The sporting goods shop fight is incredible. Some of the fights in this are almost on par with The Raid. Probably one of my favourite films of the year. This is how DTV action movies should be made.

There we go those are films that i have watched over the last 2 weeks or so.

[Rik]

Originally Posted by pedromonkey

Richard Brier's being chased by a horde of the undead is one of the highlights of the year.

One of the funniest scenes I've ever seen in a Horror film

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Whats distasteful about Chernobyl Diaries Pedro?

I don't know anything about the film.

[Rik]

Originally Posted by Demdike

Whats distasteful about Chernobyl Diaries Pedro?

I don't know anything about the film.

I think it may have been Suzi that said it was racist

Edit: It was Sharon who said it was offensive and Keirarts said it was xenophobic towards the Russians

[SharonLynette]

Originally Posted by Rik

I think it may have been Suzi that said it was racist

Edit: It was Sharon who said it was offensive and Keirarts said it was xenophobic towards the Russians

Yes, totally. I have not and would not bother to watch it although I looked it up on IMDB when I first heard about it. The premise I find offensive. I did think I might have got it wrong but people that have seen it seem to suggest they found it offensive. I mean even though ghost towns interest me and I can see why they would make an great premise in horror, especially large industrial, concrete looking ones like Pripyat, it's just wrong.

You just know there wouldn't be something similar about well say the Three Mile Island disaster.

[Nordicdusk]

oihlgpl.jpg

Dont need to say much other than a great film but as we all know Clint dont do bad films

[keirarts]

Originally Posted by Rik

I think it may have been Suzi that said it was racist

Edit: It was Sharon who said it was offensive and Keirarts said it was xenophobic towards the Russians

It strays too much into the sinister europeans and evil russians stereotypes that some american movies fall into when dealing with some place not american. Hostel skirted it by having an icelandic character feature quite centrally, but here in chernobyl diaries the general assumption is that the russians are pretty much either crooked or incompetent.

That said I didn't find chernobyl diaries terrible, it looks fantastic on blu-ray and the last 30 minutes are good solid horror territory, but there are no diaries and I found myself wanting to watch STALKER (the russian one!) instead.


My advice, don't pay too much for it but give it a try.

[Stephen@Cult Labs]

Aren't all Europeans sinister and Evil? I thought that was common knowledge?

[keirarts]

Originally Posted by Stephen@Cult Labs

Aren't all Europeans sinister and Evil? I thought that was common knowledge?

Yeah we are!!!

lol!

It's things like the tour guide supposedly being ex special forces but behaving incompetently, the american living abroad bragging about how easy the local girls are then when they encounter some local men their practically thuggish inbred potential rapists... and thats just the stuff at the start, if the film had been better written, they could have had the americans landing themselves in the trouble simply because of the cultural divide.

I didn't find the fact they shot in the actual location that troubling, Stalker is a whole mythology created around the place, theres the novel, a tarkovsky film a bunch of russian made games and the russians even hold LARP games of stalker at the site, for me it was all the crude depiction of the europeans compared to the americans.

[keirarts]

Incidentally, does anyone know if criterion are planning to issue a tarkovsky box set? I have heard bad things about the uk set from artificial eye and i'm not interested enough to see them again that i'd fork out the asking prices on the seperate releases of Solaris and stalker.