What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[Make Them Die Slowly]

Originally Posted by Nosferatu@Cult Labs

I remember watching it in the cinema and thinking (something along the lines of) 'This is a film straight from headlines in the Daily Mail', so wondered if that was the same as We Still Kill the Old Way – it seems it is.

WSKTOW exploits modern British gangster films as equally as it does the fears of Middle England. It is worth watching purely for the very obvious fun Ogilvy is having playing against type.

[Nosferatu@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Make Them Die Slowly

WSKTOW exploits modern British gangster films as equally as it does the fears of Middle England. It is worth watching purely for the very obvious fun Ogilvy is having playing against type.

It's on my Lovefilm rental queue, so I'll just have to wait.

[bizarre_eye@Cult Labs]

La Poison (1951)





77/100

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by bizarre_eye@Cult Labs

Terror Night sounds great, Dem; right up my scuzzy little alley. One for the watch-list for sure.

It might be known as Bloody Movie. The Retromedia dvd is.

It's one i'll certainly watch again.

[bizarre_eye@Cult Labs]

La Vallée (1972)



Viviane, a French Consul's wife, is in New Guinea to find exotic feathers for export to Paris. She encounters four European travelers who are en route to 'La Vallée': The Valley, high in the Guinean mountains, is shown on maps as 'Obscured by Clouds' and is beyond their previous experiences. Viviane joins their trek to find rare feathers and soon becomes entwined in their journey. Their extended stay with the Mapuga tribe brings a denouement between western and indigenous values before their final quest toward the 'Valley of the Gods'.

A detached, sometimes dream-like voyage through the stunning forest landscapes of New Guinea complemented by a trippy Pink Floyd soundtrack.



69/100

[Rik]

Trio of short reviews:

Insidious:Chapter 2-Not as good as the first one, but still enjoyable enough

Insidious:Chapter 3-Not as good as the first and second ones, but still enjoyable enough (better than Shit Follows and the Babasfook )

Ted 2-Loved it, just like the first one, it had me laughing out loud throughout

That's enough for today, I'm exhausted after writing these epic length reviews!

[J Harker]

Originally Posted by Rik

Trio of short reviews:

Insidious:Chapter 2-Not as good as the first one, but still enjoyable enough

Insidious:Chapter 3-Not as good as the first and second ones, but still enjoyable enough (better than Shit Follows and the Babasfook )

Ted 2-Loved it, just like the first one, it had me laughing out loud throughout

That's enough for today, I'm exhausted after writing these epic length reviews!

Interesting...got Insidious as a free bonus disc when i bought Sinister from Asda a few years back. Insidious was the better film. The Babadook is simply brilliant and pisses from on high upon both Insidious and Sinister. I was really looking forward to the first Ted when it came out, was thoroughly disappointed with it though.

[Demoncrat]

Originally Posted by JoshuaKaitlyn

What just one year! Man it up at least do the entire seventies!

But what a year.
Giallo A Venezia and The Moomins on TV!!
I do mean every film as well
Am just being lazy doing mostly English Language first haha

[Nosferatu@Cult Labs]

I saw The Lady in the Van at the cinema yesterday and hoped it wasn't spoiled by the numerous different trailers I'd seen over the month or so it had been previewed. Thankfully, it wasn't and there is much more to it than the moment in the trailers.

Maggie Smith is brilliant as the titular character whilst Alex Jennings is remarkable as two different versions of Alan Bennett: the one who writes about things and the one who does things (they are on screen at the same time and, for what it's worth, I thought his performance was better than Tom Hardy doing a similar thing in Legend). It's a film full of memorable lines and scenes; some funny, some almost heartbreaking in their pathos.

The fact that it is, as the caption at the beginning says, 'a mostly true story' and was filmed in the house in which Alan Bennett lived at the time (the real Alan Bennett makes a cameo appearance at the end) adds to the sense of authenticity which is so prevalent in Bennett's writing.

Thankfully, it has stayed around in cinemas longer than I expected, but will probably disappear in the next fortnight, so catch it while you can – highly recommended.

[Frankie Teardrop]

THE HILLS HAVE EYES PART 2 - THHE2 has a pretty abysmal reputation. I'd never seen it before though, so when I saw it sitting there in CEX wearing a £1 price tag, I felt obliged to check it out. Well, I'm struggling to find many positives to report, although I think the received wisdom about THHE2 being unapproachably bad is wrong. It is however a very mediocre effort, and, where the original was raw and abrasive enough to hit the mark as part of horror's new crude wave in the seventies, the sequel only plays on established slasher flick themes and motifs and comes across all the duller for not going anywhere with them. The obligatory bunch of kids are out in the desert somewhere, trying to reach a motorcycle tournament. Of course, after they take that ill advised short cut they end up in the domain of the bad guys – the latter being two cannibal mutant survivors from the first film. Some stalking and killing ensue, but not enough to redeem what's essentially a pretty boring flick. There are some aspects which make THHE2 worthwhile for me personally – the motorcycling element seemed really period and in that sense as interesting as a bad eighties fashion statement, Michael Berryman is always a 'pleasure' the behold, and a slightly insane high point is reached when a dog has a flashback. But all that amounts to pretty slim pickings, really. Seeing this, you might find it difficult to believe that Craven's game changer was just around the corner.

ROCK AND ROLL NIGHTMARE – I don't know much about John Mikl Thor, apart from that he's the star of 'Rock'n'Roll Nightmare'. AND that maybe, just maybe, he holds the keys to an existence where all reality is an illusion and where camp metallers lie in wait to do perpetual battle with satan. That's what he seems to be telling us here. Let's just hope it's only a movie. What a movie, though. 'RnR Nightmare' is a bad film. Mind-bendingly bad. You pick up really quickly that a film is setting its stall out when one of its opening salvos is a two minute shot of a van driving down a road. Or, to be fair, a series of roads. That's enough to propel it towards the avant-garde. I don't think Bela Tarr would make a movie about a rock band trying to record an album in a house full of novelty store demons and tiny horror munchkins which look like they belong in something from eighties children's ITV, though. But that's how 'R'nR Nighmare' erm rolls. The sense of soulless emptiness captured by that overlong van driving footage is elsewhere in abundance. John Thor's rockers, who are, it goes without saying, excruciating non-actors of the rankest degree, sit around arguing about where they're going to sleep, when they're going to wash the dishes, where one of them has zzzzzz. It should just be boring, but it's mesmerising. Occasionally they do a rock number, for example, the song of theirs which appears to be entitled 'Rock'. That's pretty brazen. After a while, demonic occurrences happen in a matter of fact kind of way before the devil turns up and John gives us his spiel about the entire film having been a projection of his mind etc etc. The devil seems a bit freaked out, all the more so when John strips down to his steel loin cloth and prances around like an over satisfied middle aged cat man with too many muscles. John wins the battle, but, seriously, who could not win with that kind of back-up? A mad anti-classic, and hits all the inexplicable bum notes that its shot on video follow up 'Intercessor' failed to get near.

THE HOUSE OF CLOCKS – I have a real fondness for Lucio Fulci's less well regarded movies, particularly those ones he did for Italian TV in the late eighties. They might be hack jobs, but THOC and its companion piece, 'Sweet House Of Horrors', are full of trademark Fulci weirdness and his contempt for well observed realism. In fact, both of them are pretty warped. THOC features an elderly couple who live in a stately home full of (can you guess what it is yet?) clocks. A younger couple, the previous occupants of the house, lie on slabs with long nails sticking through their throats. The couple's maid gets stabbed in the crotch with a pole, some criminals burst in and murder the old couple, time goes backwards and it all gets a bit freaky. In may ways as baffling as something like 'The Beyond', THOC also throws in some surprisingly raw violence for a TV movie. There's some really nice imagery, too – the pendulum of one of the clocks swinging to a halt when the old man dies, his image reflected in the clock's brass surfaces etc etc. Aside from all this, there's the obvious pleasure of late eighties aesthetics, punchy electronic sounds and overall brashness. I say it's a winner, and this is after I watched my crummy Vipco non-anamorphic effort. I can't imagine THOC ever getting bells and whistles on blu-ray, but it deserves a nicer presentation.