What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

American Nightmare (1981)

Ultra grim slasher movie from Canada about a wealthy pianist trying to track down his prostitute sister in Toronto's dark and seedy underbelly.

People who think Combat Shock is grim clearly haven't seen this. The pianists trail is full of vice, blackmail, incest and savage murder. The locales are all squalid and the majority of the characters degenerates. The gloominess of the lighting and the vhs quality picture add weight to the film and make the murders appear more brutal. The bathtub kill is hard viewing. It's long and drawn out and downright nasty come the end.

There's a crudeness about American Nightmare that ups the ante in the sleaze and grit departments, in fact it has a strong Giallo vibe to it making it more than just a slasher film.

Recommended.

[fuzzymctiger]

Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens - 10/10

Caught this 12 hours ago at 9am at IMAX, the only one outside of America with laser projection, and I have to say, what a spectacular movie. An amazing cast provides amazing performances in a movie that's fun, thrilling, and everything you want it to be.
It brings everything that was great about the original trilogy (and ORIGINAL original as well, read practical effects and silly background monsters), and builds upon it with great new characters, amazing relations, and one thing that stood out for me, raw emotion.
That was the highlight for me. Not the amazing action sections which gave me goosebumps (JJ brings a new thrill to the tech of the series by having it pack an impressive punch), but the raw emotion displayed by characters so frequently. Fear, sadness, disappointment, pure excitement, these characters all feel so real.
Compared with the prequels, the effects are absolutely astonishing, the writing is fantastic, there's nothing cringeworthy or out of place, a nice absence of political talk (read trade agreements and alliances), and lightsabers are special and thrilling again! (The fights are perfectly choreographed and each user has their own unique observable fighting style)
Honestly, see this ASAP. Spoilers are flying around fast and the trailer does a good job of revealing nothing. A new saga has been perfectly set up, in a way that feels like it was always destined to be from the climax of Return of the Jedi, but doesn't feel like a forced redo to bring every single character back. New life has been brought back into this franchise and I will surely watch this again a few more times before it leaves theatres.

[trebor8273]

Originally Posted by fuzzymctiger

Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens - 10/10

Caught this 12 hours ago at 9am at IMAX, the only one outside of America with laser projection, and I have to say, what a spectacular movie. An amazing cast provides amazing performances in a movie that's fun, thrilling, and everything you want it to be.
It brings everything that was great about the original trilogy (and ORIGINAL original as well, read practical effects and silly background monsters), and builds upon it with great new characters, amazing relations, and one thing that stood out for me, raw emotion.
That was the highlight for me. Not the amazing action sections which gave me goosebumps (JJ brings a new thrill to the tech of the series by having it pack an impressive punch), but the raw emotion displayed by characters so frequently. Fear, sadness, disappointment, pure excitement, these characters all feel so real.
Compared with the prequels, the effects are absolutely astonishing, the writing is fantastic, there's nothing cringeworthy or out of place, a nice absence of political talk (read trade agreements and alliances), and lightsabers are special and thrilling again! (The fights are perfectly choreographed and each user has their own unique observable fighting style)
Honestly, see this ASAP. Spoilers are flying around fast and the trailer does a good job of revealing nothing. A new saga has been perfectly set up, in a way that feels like it was always destined to be from the climax of Return of the Jedi, but doesn't feel like a forced redo to bring every single character back. New life has been brought back into this franchise and I will surely watch this again a few more times before it leaves theatres.

So we can now all forget the prequels ever took place

[fuzzymctiger]

Originally Posted by trebor8273

So we can now all forget the prequels ever took place

Haha, from memory, you'd would not miss a single thing having not seen the prequel trilogy as I don't think there was a single reference to it or anything that happened during it.

We're finally getting the new Star Wars films we deserve after years of dealing with Lucas!

[profondo rosso]

Originally Posted by Justin101

Polyester at the cinema with scratch and sniff cards! Possibly my favourite John Waters movie is so manic all of the way through and definitely benefits from an audience. It was a great atmosphere and I haven't laughed so much in ages!

What we want now is a stage play of Nekromantik with the scratch and sniff parts!

[trebor8273]

The Phantom menace

It's worse than I remember from the last time I saw it, dreadful dialogue, politics, over long and boring pod race, annoying wooden child actor and of course jar jar. The only real highlights are darth maul, Qui-Gon Jinn and the light sabre battle at the end.

[Susan Foreman]

Originally Posted by Justin101

Polyester at the cinema with scratch and sniff cards! Possibly my favourite John Waters movie is so manic all of the way through and definitely benefits from an audience. It was a great atmosphere and I haven't laughed so much in ages!

Originally Posted by profondo rosso

What we want now is a stage play of Nekromantik with the scratch and sniff parts!

As someone who has [as regular readers will know] been involved in the making of porn films...

...NO WE DON'T!!!

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

The Mummy's Hand (1940)

Sequel to Karloff's The Mummy (1932) in name only. The Mummy's Hand was the first in a cycle of four new films of varying degrees of quality about the Mummy, Kharis.

The story about a couple of down trodden archeologists trying to finance an expedition to discover the tomb of the Egyptian princess Ananka is enlivened by great turns from Dick Foran and especially Wallace Ford who provides comedy relief and comic timing the likes of Abbott and Costello could only dream of. One of Ford's scenes i actually found quite shocking and seemingly out of character. The film also benefits from a strong turn from the devilishly shady George Zucco as he controls the Mummy and instructs it in it's killing spree.

The Mummy itself looks great, shambling around slowly yet somehow no one can ever quite get away from it. It was western actor Tom Tyler's only portrayal of the monster before being replaced by Lon Chaney despite him being just as convincing as the bandaged creature.

Perhaps surprisingly for a B-picture The Mummy's Hand is really very good. It's mix of horror, action, romance and humour really hit the mark with me and i found it thoroughly entertaining.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Inbred (2011)

Oh dear! Cradle of Fear director Alex Chandon returns with a North Yorkshire set backwoods horror.

It's actually pretty good. In fact Chandon also brings something new to the backwoods horror genre in the form of a talent show where the terrifying yokels entertain the crowds with ingenious ways to kill city dwellers, in this instance with a horse.

As with the divisive Cradle of Fear , Chandon uses prosthetics and physical effects where he can, meaning the kills, of which there are numerous, always look realistic and extremely gory.

The film is randomly acted. Jo Hartley from This is England leads the city kids and is fairly convincing, Emmerdale's Dominic Brunt is one of the inbred yokels and is wasted. In fact the yokels come across far too cliched even for a comedy horror and some of their dialogue and acting is at times awkward to say the least. Emily Booth features in the film but thankfully gets an axe in her head in the first five minutes.

Inbred is fairly pacy once we get past some of the cringe worthy early sequences of chat and should be a worthwhile watch for those like me who enjoy a fix of backwoods horror.

[J Harker]

Just took my boy to watch The Peanuts Movie.
Load of rubbish, but then i never like Charlie Brown and Snoopy when i was a kid.