What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[Make Them Die Slowly]

Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs

Glad you enjoyed it as much as i did MTDS.

Loved it Dem, reminded me of early James Ellroy in it's tone. It was also refreshing to see a story not so much about moral corruption but the possibilities of a man with no morals in a world without boundaries. I was surprised at how disturbing I found it, much more so than recent shockers like A SERBIAN FILM reviewed excellently, just now, by Frankie.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Make Them Die Slowly

Loved it Dem, reminded me of early James Ellroy in it's tone. It was also refreshing to see a story not so much about moral corruption but the possibilities of a man with no morals in a world without boundaries. I was surprised at how disturbing I found it, much more so than recent shockers like A SERBIAN FILM reviewed excellently, just now, by Frankie.

Gyllenhaal was a far scarier proposition than so called screen monsters like Myers, Krueger etal.

His high intensity performance even when he was being friendly was just so downright creepy.

[Make Them Die Slowly]

Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs

Gyllenhaal was a far scarier proposition than so called screen monsters like Myers, Krueger etal.

His high intensity performance even when he was being friendly was just so downright creepy.

Some of the scenes between him and Rene Russo were out and out nasty in a very quiet way.

[J Harker]

Who Can Kill A Child, a 1979 horror from Spain.
Wow, I'd normally wait till tomorrow sometime to post, but this was so good i wanted to blab about it now.
So a couple on holiday in Spain rent a boat and sail out to the remote island of Almanzora for a few days of real peace and quiet in a real Spanish hideaway.
Problem is Almanzora's all gone a bit Children of the Corn.
I only heard of this film a few years ago on Mark Gatiss' documentary Horror Europa (in itself well worth watching)
and despite being interested i wasn't intrigued enough to track it down there and then. In fact I've only bought it now because it was one of the only things i was interested in on Eurekas Friday Flash deal thing last week.
Well more fool me as this is easily one of the best horrors I've watched in a long time, similar in plot to the aforementioned Children of the Corn but far far superior in execution. For a 70's Euro horror the lead characters are remarkably likeable, a problem i often have with Euro horror. The setting, a bright sunsoaked Spanish island is somehow made incredibly sinister and almost claustrophobic and the kids are just bloody evil.
There's more to say about this and maybe I'll gibber on again a bit tomorrow but for now I'll say this film is well worth tracking down and Eurekas dvd looks superb.

Just realised this isin the wrong thread. Sorry mods, if you would be so kind?

[keirarts]

For me NIGHTCRAWLER was up there with MAPS TO THE STARS as one of last years best films.

I really like HMV's steelbook for it..

nightcrawler.jpg

[Hawkmonger]

I never got around to watching it in the cinema, so i'll nab the blu-ray at some point.

[Nordicdusk]

I watched Cold In July the other night great film I really liked the change in direction about the half way point and always good to see Don Johnson getting a good role. The soundtrack was good too with some 80s electro in places but one fault with the film and soundtrack was that in some scenes the electro music just felt out of place and way too force.

8/10

[Nordicdusk]

Graduation Day

Watched this last night fun slasher I loved the pushy coach seemed to get a little too excited while watching his team training .88 did a great job with the restoration last film I watched this I may aswell watched it with my eyes closed it was so dark The Blu Ray is packed with special features a great start to the slasher collection.

7/10 movie
9/10 extras

[Demoncrat]

Originally Posted by Frankie Teardrop

THE POSSESSION – I enjoyed this Sam Raimi production from a couple of years back. It opened to fairly lacklustre reviews, and I can't imagine it being much of a red hot fan favourite – still, something about it appealed to me. I think it was the slightly stylised look and feel, which reminded me in places of Kubrick in 'The Shining'... a distanced, formalised and creepy way of looking good. Maybe the plot doesn't have much going for it, though it should, as it at least tries to translate the standard possession protocol into Judaic terms, an original and potentially interesting move. But I couldn't really work out whether it was doing anything with the whole Dybbuk thing beyond novelty. Still, this element intrigued, and I felt the film genuinely built atmosphere. I was creeped out by some of the visuals... fingers in the throat etc. Maybe I'm being a tad subjective, but that stuff really worked for me. The sinister hospital scan, too. The jump scares were there, and it did seem manufactured in the shadow of latter day multiplex horror.insidious.com. But, it held my attention, and I got into it. Maybe some would disagree, but I recommend 'The Possession'.

GYMKATA – This Reagan era fantasy has a gymnastic – martial arts dude being primed to take on an endurance test in a fictional near-Eastern republic. The prize – a star wars satellite can be installed there to prevent the Russians (ehm, or 'The Other Side' in this movie's nomenklatura) from blowing us all to pieces! It's pretty bad, and pretty entertaining. The training sequence near the beginning provides a good few laughs, although this gives way to a mid-movie sag and lots of running around on the streets of a faraway province whilst gym dude gets shot at. Things pick up during the latter third, with a decidedly non-PC detour into a township where 'the criminally insane are left to rot' which goes all slo-mo zombie movie nightmare in a pretty evocative but admittedly unsound / cheesy kind of way. A good shit film. I didn't know about it before I trawled reviews for the likes of 'Miami Connection' and 'Samurai Cop'. It doesn't hold a candle to those psychotic masterpieces, but it's still worth a punt.

A SERBIAN FILM – One of the difficulties of films so divisive is that every opinion gets weighed in terms of for-and-against hysteria... thoughtfulness tends to get crushed. But 'A Serbian Film' is in need of some kind of thoughtful appraisal. For those who don't know, it's about an ex-porn star who gets sucked into something a bit fishy by a maverick auteur... 'a bit fishy' in this case means the desecration of his own family captured in the form of snuff film. 'A Serbian Film' is a slippery proposition. It puts forward a number of interesting ideas, some of which are connected with national identity, exploitation, victimhood, abjection. It poses questions based on these notions in a serious-seeming way, but, going beyond the specifically 'Serbian' factor (and I'm not suggesting one can straightforwardly 'go beyond' such a central issue ), I see this film as occupying a similar position to 'Cannibal Holocaust' – potentially a cynical, exploitative take on cynical exploitation which ends up basically AS cynical exploitation... maybe. I don't know actually, it could be a case of epater le bourgeois, it could be could be something more high, or low minded... in any case, on a visceral level, I found 'A Serbian Film' to be quite intoxicating, certainly a film which should be seen and talked about, not censored the way it has been. I saw the uncut version recently, and I can't help but echo MTDS's sentiments in his recent review... there's way worse out there, even within the realms of fairly available hardcore horror, and, even though I can see why the BBFC felt a need to cut based on the strictures they choose to abide by, personally I've been more 'disturbed' by some material they've passed in other contexts... not to say 'A Serbian Film' isn't gruelling. It is, and it's meant to be, although aesthetically its main draw for me is how it feeds all this into the nightmarish delirium of its second half, where Lynch and Cronenberg seem to be conspicuously evoked (easy references, but true enough for me). I recommend 'A Serbian Film' in its undiluted form – it may be a harsh watch on some levels, and it may leave some with a sense of having been played, but it is fascinating, and I really want to know what the director does next.

Kudos Frank, one of the saner reviews of Srpski that I've read.....

[Demoncrat]

Watched eXisTenZ (1999, David Cronenberg) on Horror Channel.

A film that I was nonplussed about at the time, I now see how wrong I was...or do I? Whilst the basic theme of reality being "not quite good enough" is quite reminiscent of Dick, cough Ubik, and I've always found Law to be too mannered a performer to invest anything in, I can honestly say that it's still head and shoulders above the excremental Gamer. Though like Dead Ringers, it contains the germ of another Cronenberg film that would have been just as good.....