What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[SShaw]

I managed to find time for 4 films while I was over in the U.K. last week

First up was 22 Jump Street which just about managed to be enjoyable. Its very similar to the original (which I enjoyed) and would probably have been more fun if I hadn't seen the trailer so many times (although some parts of the trailer didn't feature in the movie).

Then the major mistake of the week Tammy. This film was awful. My pick for the worst film of the 88 cinema visits I have made so far this year. The humour is risible.

A film I really wanted to enjoy more than I did was The 100 year old man who climbed out a window and disappeared which is some strange amalgam of Swedish noir and Forest Gump. I haven't read the book, but I hope its much better than this rather weak adaptation.

The final film, and the one which made the week for me, was Cold in July. This was brilliant with good performances from the entire cast. I didn't much like Mickle's previous film Stakeland, although I know it has found favour on these forums, but this tightly paced thriller shows he is a director worth paying attention to.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970)

A recreation from both American and Japanese perspectives of Japans bombing of Pearl Harbor.

As the film is a fair portrayal on both sides the film doesn't generate much in the way of suspense during it's opening hour as there are no villains per-se. However that all changes around the hundred minute mark and the viewer is plunged head first into one of the Second World War's most infamous days.

The twenty five minute attack on the American Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor is a stunningly realized piece of cinema. Breathtakingly recreated on a grand scale, its a real achievement and shows how realistic films can be without the use of CGI.

[keirarts]

Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs

Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970)

A recreation from both American and Japanese perspectives of Japans bombing of Pearl Harbor.

As the film is a fair portrayal on both sides the film doesn't generate much in the way of suspense during it's opening hour as there are no villains per-se. However that all changes around the hundred minute mark and the viewer is plunged head first into one of the Second World War's most infamous days.

The twenty five minute attack on the American Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor is a stunningly realized piece of cinema. Breathtakingly recreated on a grand scale, its a real achievement and shows how realistic films can be without the use of CGI.

If I recall correctly, the Japanese sequences were handled by Battle Royale director Kinji Fukasu.

[Nosferatu@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by keirarts

If I recall correctly, the Japanese sequences were handled by Battle Royale director Kinji Fukasu.

I'm 99% sure that's true. The film pisses all over Michael Bay's abominable Pearl Harbor from a great height.

[MrRange]

I watched Nightmare City for the first time in about 7 years last night. I forgot just how much fun this film is. I'd love to watch it in a cinema with a large group of horror fans, it'd be hilarious.

[dynel]

Originally Posted by MrRange

I watched Nightmare City for the first time in about 7 years last night. I forgot just how much fun this film is. I'd love to watch it in a cinema with a large group of horror fans, it'd be hilarious.

It really is fun, and it surprises me because everything about it is shitty. Everytime dr hagenberg comes out of the plane with his zombie minions it just cracks me up. Yes, i'd highly recommend screening this gem in a theater.

[Mojo]

CAPTAIN CLEGG
I first saw this on tv when I was a kid and hated it, as our local ITV station had listed it as a horror film - and it wasn't. Bastards.
Anyway, fast forward to today and watching Final Cut's Blu-ray, it's actually a hugely enjoyable adventure yarn with a great cast. Peter Cushing is absolutely at the top of his game here.
To top it all off, this must be one of the best looking Hammer BDs out there. Stunning.

[Frankie Teardrop]

VISITING HOURS – I hadn’t seen this before, and was a bit put off by some reviews which seemed to suggest that it was slightly dull. I can see how some could arrive at that kind of sentiment, but I guess it might be down to expectations – for those hoping for a wham bam slasher with flying guts and tits, ‘Visiting Hours’ will be real snore. But, if you’re up for a bleak, dour, downbeat and pretty depressing portrait of a misogynistic killer, you might come away feeling like you’ve uncovered a lost eighties gem, as I did. It’s a really well worked out flick which actually pays attention to character dynamics and oozes atmosphere (of the grim kind). Did I mention that very special ‘Canadian feeling’? If you found ‘The Kids of DeGrassi Street’ heart-warming, then this will seriously inspire you – proof positive that the wintry dead eyed vision of Cronenberg is in fact more endemic than individual. Also in keeping with the above, it has a social conscience and a sort-of feminist agenda, although there’s a leering knife attack which wouldn’t look out of place in ‘Maniac’ (I’m sure the makers would protest that they were doing the old ‘deconstructing the phallocentric male gaze thing’ again). Michael Ironside is as creepy as ever. See it, but don’t expect a standard eighties slasher.

SOLE SURVIVOR – Thought I’d give this a re-watch. I liked it last time, and still do. It’s about a woman who survives an airplane accident, only to be stalked by the dead through sequences which become progressively more paranoid and unsettling. There’s a real ambience about it, a sense of estrangement I usually look for in films of a slightly earlier vintage – I’m thinking about the psycho-ghostliness of ‘Let’s Scare Jessica To Death’, say, that kind of misty, creeping dread which closes in on you like a gauzy hand in the dark. In fact, it sort of reminded me of the feeling I get from vintage Ramsey Campbell stories, a slightly off-key mild trippiness that seems grey and suffocating. Anyway, at its best ‘Sole Survivor’ inspired this kind of response in me, but it isn’t perfect and there’s a bit of wastage around a wooden romantic subplot (that at least ends nihilistically, as does the film as a whole, obviously) and various ho-hum interactions and scenes, but in the end something weird and affecting shines through from its heart.

THE STRANGE COLOUR OF YOUR BODY’S TEARS – I’ll be honest, I wasn’t as blown away by this as I thought I might be, but, again, as always with heightened expectations, you can really set yourself up to be let down. Having said this, I did find TSCOYBT to be totally intriguing, and my viewing experience consisted of engrossed feelings rubbing up against grating alienation. Visually it’s spectacular, and I liked the sense that, if I were to return to it over repeated viewings, it would start to make sense as a kind of cryptic labyrinth of veiled meanings and ciphers. But, I doubt I’ll feel able to summon the energy to go through it for a while – it is a quite knackering film really, if you can’t wholly ‘get into it’ (which I suspect was true of most of its viewers, even the ones on here). I will say this – it’s not afraid of being totally ludicrous, and I think that this is something to be applauded. When you consider how much polished, professional, sanitised drivel is put out there by Hollywood and its counterparts, it’s really mind boggling that TSCOYBT got made at all. This makes it and its makers essential, and for that reason more than any other I take my hat off to all involved.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

The Vagrant (1992)

I like Bill Paxton as an actor, however given a poor script or a director who can't control him he does tend to ham things up in an OTT splurge. Just as he does here. His antics don't convince nor does the almost whimsical plot which could have been quite scary but ends up a failed experiment in surreal paranoia.

Instead we are left with a film about a man haunted by a vagrant which is too silly for a horror but never amusing enough for a comedy. The vagrant doesn't appear to have a motive and wastes a good performance from Marshall Bell whilst Michael Ironside also turns up as a very odd cop which adds to the films lack of focus. A wasted opportunity.

What's the Matter with Helen? (1971)

Debbie Reynolds and Shelley Winters star in this 1930's set period piece about two women who move to Hollywood following a brutal murder in their own town. The film has a fine horror premise but the lack of application and suspense during the majority of proceedings barely qualifies it as a horror film until the final act.

Reynolds steals the first half of the film with her glitzy Harlow-esq appearance but it's Winters who comes out on top during the final third with her portrayal of a woman suffering a clear nervous breakdown. The film's shocking final scene is completely ruined as it features on all the movies advertising material.

The Godsend (1979)

A mysterious woman leaves her new born baby with a young couple when she just vanishes from their English country house. As the child grows up it seems she is responsible for several deaths including those of the couples own children.

Another rip off of the tried and tested themes of The Omen, however this reasonable British thriller eschews that films shock tactics and gory deaths and relies on psychological horror themes such as paranoia instead.

The Godsend isn't a bad film at all it just treads a well worn path that, thirty five years on we've journey'd too often.

The Lamp. (1986)

An awful (for the most part) low budget affair which from the outset feels to have come from the Charles Band school of movie making. Poor acting and dodgy effects astound with their ineptness and the viewer is only prevented from nodding off during the first seventy minutes by the odd well produced death scene.

Astonishingly the final twenty minutes are much better. As though someone in the production woke up and decided to actually make a horror movie - cue more interesting bloody horror and a demonlike djinn that appears from the titular lamp.

[Susan Foreman]

Originally Posted by Frankie Teardrop

VISITING HOURS – I hadn’t seen this before, and was a bit put off by some reviews which seemed to suggest that it was slightly dull. I can see how some could arrive at that kind of sentiment, but I guess it might be down to expectations – for those hoping for a wham bam slasher with flying guts and tits, ‘Visiting Hours’ will be real snore. But, if you’re up for a bleak, dour, downbeat and pretty depressing portrait of a misogynistic killer, you might come away feeling like you’ve uncovered a lost eighties gem, as I did. It’s a really well worked out flick which actually pays attention to character dynamics and oozes atmosphere (of the grim kind). Did I mention that very special ‘Canadian feeling’? If you found ‘The Kids of DeGrassi Street’ heart-warming, then this will seriously inspire you – proof positive that the wintry dead eyed vision of Cronenberg is in fact more endemic than individual. Also in keeping with the above, it has a social conscience and a sort-of feminist agenda, although there’s a leering knife attack which wouldn’t look out of place in ‘Maniac’ (I’m sure the makers would protest that they were doing the old ‘deconstructing the phallocentric male gaze thing’ again). Michael Ironside is as creepy as ever. See it, but don’t expect a standard eighties slasher.

This was one of the 'unprosecuted Video Nasties', which was re-released in 1986 with approximately 1 min cut in 1986

However... in 1989, ITV got it's knuckles rapped by the Broadcasting Standards Council when it broadcast a version which was uncut, and had not been cleared for release!

I think I still have a copy of this screening on video somewhere