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  #19061  
Old 2nd January 2013, 10:21 PM
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Nadja!

Oh no way! I need to see that again!
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  #19062  
Old 2nd January 2013, 10:28 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bizarre_eye@Cult Labs View Post
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Thanks to sawyer for making me aware of Gwen, The Book of Sand.
More rare animation ,soon
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  #19063  
Old 2nd January 2013, 10:59 PM
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Howling 2: Striba Werewolf Bitch. Thats the ****ing title. Also, Chrisopher Lee and Reb Brown team up to fight poorly made Werewolf costumes. Also, it feel's like the writes went through the script with auto check and replaced Vampire with Werewolf. Also, Christopher Lee Holy Hand Grenade. It's awsome. I loved it.
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  #19064  
Old 2nd January 2013, 11:14 PM
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Finally watched Tim Burton's Dark Shadows (2012) and I actually thought he'd done a pretty decent job and I havenn't really been a Burton fan since Sleepy Hollow although I rather liked Sweeney Todd.

Also watched The Muppets (2012) over Christmas which I also liked but that's about it.

About to head to bed and watch Opening Night (1977).




I've also recorded all the On the Buses films.....
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  #19065  
Old 2nd January 2013, 11:51 PM
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Jack Reacher.

From the trailer to this I could have personally waited for a blu-ray release of this bar two things...

1. Werner Herzog, I remember seeing the trailer and thinking "was that?...No it COULDENT be!" except one imdb check later proved it was. He's not a pro actor but he's good as the creepy villain. Steals every scene he's in.

2. Christopher mquarrie. Most famous still for witing USUAL SUSPECTS. But for me he deserves more praise for the very underrated WAY OF THE GUN.

and Thank god for both, the film is actually pretty good, though I might have preffered someone other than cruise in the role. Mcquarrie likes to throw a lot of humour and wry observations into his scenes that lifts the material above the generic pap it so easily could have been. Best example is where two thugs come for Reacher with baseball bats, except the room is too small and the pair end up doing more damage to themselves. The film is peppered with strange and funny moments like that throughout and its also one of the reasons WOTG was so good. Its worth noting the film is a 12a and in a couple of places looks noticeably cut, so expect an 'unrated' or 'unseen directors cut' on blu-ray.
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  #19066  
Old 3rd January 2013, 09:54 AM
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I saw Jack Reacher last week and found it easily exceeded my measured expectations. From the trailer, I anticipated a 'nuts and bolts', fairly predictable action movie but it was far from that and, moreover, that Tom Cruise's diminutive stature didn't matter at all. However, it is a little unfortunate that one scene is pretty much dominated by his left tit rather than Rosamund Pike.

It's one I'll definitely check out when it's available for home viewing, something I didn't expect to say before I went to the cinema.

On Tuesday, I saw The Impossible and the scenes recreating the tsunami are mind blowing in their authenticity as it almost looks like footage from the disaster rather than something made in the studio and with CGI. It's a really moving film which perfectly illustrates how the hospitals were overflowing with the dead, dying, injured and people looking for their relatives.

Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts both give arguably career-best performances and will probably be Oscar-nominated, with Tom Holland really impressing as Lucas, their eldest son. As well as McGregor and Watts, this will probably be Oscar-nominated for Best Picture and Best Director (for J.A. Bayona).

Due to the scale of some of the disaster scenes and the audio-visual impact, it's one to see at the cinema if possible.
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  #19067  
Old 3rd January 2013, 11:51 AM
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Not been posting that much or updating my Letterboxd profile due to my laptop being offline and only posting on my phone (hence shorter posts with more autocorrect mistakes). Anyway, this is my December viewing as far as I can recollect (not as many Christmas horrors as I had anticipated):


A Nightmare on Elm Street - I've lost count how many times I've seen this but I never tired of it. It's such a fantastically made and genuinely scary film. I love how subtle some of the dream scenes are (leaves blowing in the school hall, a sheep running down a corridor!) which gives the dreams a far more surreal edge than those in the later installments.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge - A teenage boy tries his best to deal with his repressed homosexuality. Freddy Krueger turns up for a bit. An oddly watchable sequel even though it eschews the rules and logic of its predecessor. Not sure why these decisions were made and it's by no means a great film but there is something watchable about it.


A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors
- I really don't get the praise for this one. Maybe it's the fact that Craven's back on scripting duties, maybe it's the return of Heather Langenkamp or just the fact that it goes back to the rules set out by the first film but it just doesn't do it for me. The dream sequences are over-the-top and just plain silly compared to the more sinister and subtle scenes of the first film (a result of having far more money to play with in this film I guess), the whole Dream Warriors aspect is just laughable (magic wizard? Acrobatics?) and it marks the start of Freddy's decline into a wise-cracking japester ("Welcome to Prime Time bitch!". Seriously?). I thought I'd enjoy it more than I did when I was younger but still can't get into it at all.

Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare - I skipped parts 4 and 5 in favour of the ones I remember watching when I was younger (still not sure I've even seen parts 4 and 5.). This is woeful beyond belief. The death-by-videogames sequence is shockingly poor and although the idea behind the hearing aid death is actually pretty chilling it's executed in an over-the-top manner which renders it as laughable as anything else in the film. The best bit is probably the Johnny Depp cameo to be honest. Dismal.

Wes Craven's New Nightmare - Wes Craven attempts to regain control of Freddy Krueger and turn him back into a terrfying film monster, with excellent results. I absolutely love this film and think it's one of the best meta-horror films ever made (much better than Scream). The nods to the original film are excellently done and I love Craven's overt commentary on how diluted the Freddy character has become. The stretchy-tongue denouement is a little silly but at this point it doesn't matter.

Santa Claws - John A Russo directs this horror film starring Debbie Rochon as a scream queen stalked by an obsessive fan. Remarkably low on plot, HIDEOUSLY shot with dismal acting and with no scares or gore this is genuinely one of the worst things I have ever seen. A few cast members of Night of the Living dead pop up in small roles to sully their reputations and about a third of the film is footage of other 'scream queens' gratuitiously dancing and stripping for a low budget magazine video which I believe Russo released in its own right. The titular character doesn't really dress as Santa Claus (although he does wear a Santa suit sprayed black with a ski mask over his head which amusingly muffles his voice in an unintentional way) but he does commit his murders with some sort of clawed gardening tool. Hard to believe it's by the same man who directed Midnight and even makes the 30th Anniversary Night of the Living Dead look like a masterpiece.

Silent Night Deadly Night - Recommended viewing at the end of the year. Still as entertaining as ever.

Silent Night Deadly Night 2 - staggeringly dismal. I can kind of understand why people might like this as a camp classic ("Garbage daaayy" scene and all) but surely everyone just skips the first 40 minutes of tedious and cynical recap?

Silent Night Deadly Night 3 - I can't remember if I actually made it all the way through on this one. It was late and, well, the film's rubbish. As if the previous films first 40 minutes wasn't a sign of the franchise's immediate decline this one brings the notion of psychic powers into the mix, always the death knell in a slasher series.

Die Hard - More late-December viewing. Why can't we have more action films like this? It seems to manage the difficult job of taking itself seriously at the same time of not taking itself seriously. Full of excellent action set pieces with great one-liners and not afraid of showing violence it's one of my favourite Hollywood action films ever.

Christmas Evil - Not what it looks like. More psychological horror than outright slasher and no worse for it. Oddly moving ending.

Jaws - it's been years since I've seen this and I had honestly forgotten how excellent it is. Genuinely scary with a lot of the horror down to mere suggestion due to a reluctance to show too much of the poor special effects which makes it far scarier. I still jumped. It's easy to forget how great Spielberg was and even though he seems to be more of a fan of cloying sentiment these days it's always worth remembering how grisly and upsetting the death of the little boy is near the start of the film.

Final Destination - this started on some Sky channel and I was too tired and hungover to change channel so gave it a rewatch. I'm not a fan of the term 'guilty pleasure' as I think anything I like I should be able to justify and not be ashamed of but I do believe this term applies to the Final Destination franchise pretty well. No-one seems to remark how it takes a part of the first Omen film (people being marked for unavoidable death by a mysterious hand and then meeting their end in unlikely accidents) and bases a whole film around it but that doesn't bother me. I like the stupidity of the plot, the willingness of most characters to believe the absurd idea of being stalked by death, the ridiculous hammy conversations about 'Death's design' and the inventive, Rube Goldberg machine-esque deaths. Top stuff

Final Destination 2 - really decent sequel which follows on from the previous film and builds on its story in an interesting way. The freeway pile-up scene is fantastically done too

Final Destination 3 - the franchise starts to run out of steam a little at this stage but this retread is still ok and Mary Elizabeth Winstead is as good as ever in it. It shamelessly wears its The Omen influence on its sleeve this time by making photographs the method of people being marked for death. Watched it on dvd with the Choose Their Fate interactive option which was an enjoyable gimmick where you can (sort of) control the outcomes of the characters.

The League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse - the characters from The League of Gentlemen discover they're characters whose world is about to end and travel to the real world to confront their writers and convince them to carry on with their story. It'd be easy to turn this sort of meta-film into a smug wankfest but it actually works really well and I think I'd prefer this over a genuine Royston Vasey film, especially considering the mixed nature of the third series. It's not full of the usual nudging and winking you might expect from such a film even though this sort of thing was hardly revolutionary stuff in 2005 and the meta-narrative works because the Royston Vasey characters are so odd that they can only exist in someone's mind giving the whole thing an odd sort of logic, unlike the Red Dwarf Back to Earth special which unashamedly rips this off and turns it into a smug "aren't we clever?" fest. Apocalypse is also a really funny film and even though, as the film points out, Herr Lipp's unintentional innuendo-laden one liners are fairly one dimensional and easy to write, I never stopped laughing at him and even felt happy that he managed to get a...ahem...happy ending with some children. Alles klar!


The Slumber Party Massacre - apparently a feminist take on the slasher film but is no more feminist and empowering than any other slasher film really. Subtext becomes in-yer-face text with the cutting down to size of the killer's drill. Pretty good fun though.

Scary Movie 4 - found this on my Sky+ box with no recollection of how it got there, honest guv. Probably a combination of Christmas drinking and inebriated optimism. Gave it a go as it was barely over an hour long and had David Zucker as director and Jerry Abrahams as one of the writers. Airplane this ain't. The thing that makes their previous films so good is the sheer barrage of jokes thrown at you and any jokes regarding pop culture references don't take up too much of the film's time. Scary Movie 4 just hastily pastes various plots from various films and does a few fart jokes around them. Sad to see Leslie Nielsen turn up as a George W Bush-esque president.

Halloween 4
- pretty decent attempt to revive the franchise following Halloween III's failure. I still think the third entry is a lot better than this which does go through the motions at times. Can never get enough of Dionald Pleasance's scenery chewing though

Halloween 5 -More of the same which is no bad thing although the Man in Black stuff is a bit mystifying and an odd attempt to add backstory in the sequel which just seems a bit desperate. Donald Pleasance seems to hassle a lot of young children in this one.
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  #19068  
Old 3rd January 2013, 12:02 PM
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Really good selection of films there, Paul, and I agree with (I think) every comment you made. I haven't seen Scary Movie 4 though and really have no overwhelming desire to do so!
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  #19069  
Old 3rd January 2013, 04:12 PM
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Watched some of my xmas presents...


Shameless' DTAD & Killer Nun (so I now have a Shameless section....not as big as some, but itl grow I'm sure.....). Both fine examples of their respective genres I find.

Also watched Water Power & TNECOOTGrave on Boxing Day. both went down well. Next year Thundercrack and Liquid Sky methinks!!
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  #19070  
Old 3rd January 2013, 07:28 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bizarre_eye@Cult Labs View Post
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Thanks to sawyer for making me aware of Gwen, The Book of Sand.
Some nice ones in there BE...but not a single HK film?
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