What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[Inspector Abberline]

Donnie Brasco
The problem with making an American gangster film is that eventually someone is going to compare it with Goodfellas, which is bit of hard act to follow by anyone's standards.especially if it is set in the 1970's and early 80's And there does seem to be an almost endless stream of mafia books of real life hit-men and assorted goons. Luckily Donnie Brasco is not only based on a rather good book Donnie Brasco: My Undercover Life in the Mafia by Joseph D. Pistone with Richard Woodley but it has a stellar cast, Al Pacino and Johnny Depp, Michael Madsen, Bruno Kirby and James Russo all adds to making this one of the better gangster flicks of recent times.
With Johnny Depp as Joseph Pistone/Donnie Brasco FBI undercover agent trying to infiltrate Mafia Bonanno crime family. Depp is always at his best when he is inhabiting the skin of a real person (although his cockney accent is pretty bad see From Hell ),and even Michael Madsen manages to stretch his bad guy persona beyond his usual Reservoir Dogs growl which he has been cultivating ever since he played Mr Blonde.Al Pacino is obviously no stranger to these type of roles and could sleep walk his way through a film like this, and he still manages to pull out one of his best performances as the loser gangster Benjamin "Lefty" Ruggiero. Brasco manages to look at the lives of low-level mafia hoods and also the effects of working undercover so deeply that the character of Brasco does not really know where his loyalties lie anymore. With Depp going all gangster again recently with the film Black Mass dealing with real-life Irish gangster James "Whitey" Bulger,I thought it was about time I gave Donnie Brasco a re-watch,apart from all the killings and 1970's soundtrack what really sets the film apart is the character relationship between Lefty Ruggiero (Pacino) and Brasco(Depp) especially towards the end when Brasco realises Lefty will be hit when Brasco's cover is blown. Mike Newell (director) is no Martin Scorsese,but at least by making Donnie brasco i can just about forgive him for making Four Weddings and a Funeral,only just mind you.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Inspector Abberline

Donnie Brasco
The problem with making an American gangster film is that eventually someone is going to compare it with Goodfellas, which is bit of hard act to follow by anyone's standards.especially if it is set in the 1970's and early 80's And there does seem to be an almost endless stream of mafia books of real life hit-men and assorted goons. Luckily Donnie Brasco is not only based on a rather good book Donnie Brasco: My Undercover Life in the Mafia by Joseph D. Pistone with Richard Woodley but it has a stellar cast, Al Pacino and Johnny Depp, Michael Madsen, Bruno Kirby and James Russo all adds to making this one of the better gangster flicks of recent times.
With Johnny Depp as Joseph Pistone/Donnie Brasco FBI undercover agent trying to infiltrate Mafia Bonanno crime family. Depp is always at his best when he is inhabiting the skin of a real person (although his cockney accent is pretty bad see From Hell ),and even Michael Madsen manages to stretch his bad guy persona beyond his usual Reservoir Dogs growl which he has been cultivating ever since he played Mr Blonde.Al Pacino is obviously no stranger to these type of roles and could sleep walk his way through a film like this, and he still manages to pull out one of his best performances as the loser gangster Benjamin "Lefty" Ruggiero. Brasco manages to look at the lives of low-level mafia hoods and also the effects of working undercover so deeply that the character of Brasco does not really know where his loyalties lie anymore. With Depp going all gangster again recently with the film Black Mass dealing with real-life Irish gangster James "Whitey" Bulger,I thought it was about time I gave Donnie Brasco a re-watch,apart from all the killings and 1970's soundtrack what really sets the film apart is the character relationship between Lefty Ruggiero (Pacino) and Brasco(Depp) especially towards the end when Brasco realises Lefty will be hit when Brasco's cover is blown. Mike Newell (director) is no Martin Scorsese,but at least by making Donnie brasco i can just about forgive him for making Four Weddings and a Funeral,only just mind you.

Nice review of an excellent film, Inspector.

[iank]

Juggernaut. A passenger liner with over a thousand people on board is plunged into terror when a madman rings the company to report he has placed a number of lethal explosive devices on board - and he'll let them all off unless he's paid handsomely. Richard Harris, Omar Sharif and Anthony Hopkins lead an absolutely stellar cast (Ian Holm, Julian Glover, Roy Kinnear, David Hemmings, Freddie Jones and many more recognisable faces) in this very British and very enjoyable 70s thriller.

[Make Them Die Slowly]

ANT-MAN

He's tiny!

[Cinematic Shocks]

Exterminator 2 (1984)

A piss poor sequel to the fantastic original but passably entertaining sleaze. It's bad but it's Cannon bad.

** out of ****

[Frankie Teardrop]

FROZEN SCREAM – Think you know 'bad'? Like me, you've probably sat through plenty of turkeys, some merely dull beyond redemption, some so horrendous they carve out a microuniverse of their own. This is definitely one of the latter – it's been a long time since I saw something so random. 'Frozen Scream', although previously available, has been recently issued by Vinegar Syndrome as part of a Renee Harmon double bill, its companion piece being 'The Executioner Part 2'. Whereas the latter has its flea ridden post-dubbed charms, it has nothing on 'Frozen Scream', a freaky relic which is poorly made to the point of collapse. It's about... well, I'm still not really sure, but basically there's some stuff to do with scientists working on some kind of immortality process, some cowled ?zombies?, a religious cult, and lots of those bad movie staples, people wandering about and talking a lot. Except in this case, those long talky scenes are disrupted ad hoc by random voice overs and characters who are introduced from behind – yeah that's right, the most logical move ever when bringing in a central player is to feature the back of their head for their first two minutes of screentime. This kind of thing is definitely symptomatic of the film's overall 'approach', one which takes in events that go nowhere and characters who drop out for no reason. The acting is predictably awful, in parallel with the direction and the editing, but all this ghastliness is subverted by that most seventies of horror film phenomena, the trippy, dream-like visual that nearly opens the door to a different movie. There's a lot of that in 'Frozen Scream', which emerges as a warped, unworkable amalgam of unintentional weirdness through incompetence, and deliberate, actually effective, dreamy strangeness. Definitely a must-see for fans of the epically awful and bizarre.

DEMONOID – Samantha Egger is chased by a severed hand in this schlocker from '79. Stuart Whitman is also slumming it, here as a priest who ends up sticking a sharp object through one of his own mitts after it becomes possessed. The five fingered beast at work in this film has something to do with a demonic statue from down in a Mexican mine and is obviously supposed to be a supernatural entity of some kind, although it has to be said that rational exposition isn't 'Demonoid's strongest 'hand'. At times it's a bit hard to tell what's going on, and why. It goes for a certain seventies aesthetic – flat, nearly TV movie-esque, but punctuated with some more genuinely atmospheric or eerie moments and elements of stylisation, such as the synthesiser bits on the soundtrack and the full blooded opening, where cloaked figures hack off the hand of a semi-nude. The rest of 'Demonoid' isn't quite as exploitative as that latter stuff suggests, but it's still as crazy, and the whole thing whirls past in a frenzy of car chases, pointless conversations and delirious hand action. Great stuff, for me at least. Out recently from Vinegar Syndrome, and well deserving of your attention if you like this kind of bilge.

SILENT NIGHT – It's not xmas anymore, so sue me. This is a loose reworking of 'classic' eighties slasher 'Silent Night, Deadly Night', although in truth it has little to do with the latter other than referencing a few pivotal moments (the antler scene from the first one, for example). It's about a small town cop following the trail of some festive homicides – there's an element of 'which santa did it?' before all the feverish speculation gives way to that hoary genre touchstone, the urban myth, in this case that one about the evil santa with the flame thrower (no, me neither). This kind of material is vulnerable to a slightly arch approach let's say, but, whilst there was a blackly comedic aspect to the proceedings, I think 'Silent Night' did admirably well in reigning this in and relegating it to a couple of gore gags and the hilariously out of place Malcolm McDowall, who with a kind of stoic grace spat out lines which at times seemed deliberately contrived to sound as though they should come from anyone's mouth but his. Aside from this merriment, 'Silent Night' actually came across as pretty mean spirited and grimly sadistic – good. Some of the kills were quite vicious and a surprisingly dour tone held sway in between blood lettings. I'm a fan of the original, and I really liked this one too. An example of little finds that come courtesy of other labber's reviews (cheers, Dem).

BLOODY BIRTHDAY – The 'killer kid' sub genre has to be the most mean spirited of horror specialisms. No wonder that the classic examples of this tendency are all quite subdued – 'The Innocents', 'Who Can Kill A Child' etc. 'Bloody Birthday' isn't as classy as the aforementioned, and seems more akin to its evil twin, 'The Devil Times Five', in that it's part of the wave of seventies exploitation horror (spiritually, at least – it was put out in 1980). Like 'Demonoid' it's got that typically flat, 'TV' type look that rarely does anything stylistically interesting, although this in itself has a distinctive feel to it, perhaps especially nowadays. Content wise, it's about a trio of psychopathic ten year olds who were all born “at the time of the eclipse” - one of the other characters is well into astrology, and thinks they're all messed up due to the absence of Saturn in their natal charts. Anyway, the kids basically murder a bunch of people one by one, giving the film a slight slasher vibe. It's not gory or overly sleazy, but it is fast paced, and there's just a nasty, mean minded callousness about it which would seem out of place maybe in a film today – for example, one of the trio, a piranha faced little girl, charges boys from the block to peep at her sister who thinks she's alone in her bedroom. It's always been one of my fave seventies trash flicks, and looks great on the 88 Films re-release.

[bizarre_eye@Cult Labs]

Funky Forest: The First Contact (Naisu no mori: The First Contact) (2005)



Now I like weird as much as the next weirdo, but this just seemed to be stretching the boundaries of 'weird for weirdness sake' a little too far. Still, you can't help but be hypnotised by some of the strangeness on offer and it certainly isn't boring, although at times testing and certainly ridiculously overlong for what it offers, what with being over 2 and a half hours in length.



56/100

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Make Them Die Slowly

ANT-MAN

He's tiny!

And it's dross!

Edit. It was better than many superhero films i've seen recently but that's not saying much. I'm starting to believe Marvel isn't my thing at all.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Frankie Teardrop

FROZEN SCREAM – Think you know 'bad'? Like me, you've probably sat through plenty of turkeys, some merely dull beyond redemption, some so horrendous they carve out a microuniverse of their own. This is definitely one of the latter

Werewolf Rising (2014) is definitely one of the former. In fact dull beyond redemption is a far more exciting way of describing this film than anything i saw onscreen last night.

Shot digitally it's way too bright for a start, having that tv movie look to it, but in reality the way it looks is the least of it's crimes.

I'm referring back to Frankie here. I wouldn't call it dull beyond redemption if it was any good, if it was exciting, interesting, mind bending, gory, scary, spooky... it isn't. It's dull beyond redemption. Mind you the finale where three blokes chase the poor girl (in more ways than one - she'll surely never work again after this debacle) dressed in teddy bear outfits which were supposedly werewolves, did bring a smirk to my face, as did the wannabe wolf woman who disrobed by a camp fire with one minute to go of the film before getting her throat torn out...one minute to go! Were they serious?

Fortunately it was a Zoverstocks cheapy costing me under £1.50 delivered so perhaps i can't complain too much. No! Damn you! I can! Thinking about it. £1.50 was possibly double the film's FX budget.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Frankie Teardrop

SILENT NIGHT – It's not xmas anymore, so sue me. This is a loose reworking of 'classic' eighties slasher 'Silent Night, Deadly Night', although in truth it has little to do with the latter other than referencing a few pivotal moments (the antler scene from the first one, for example). It's about a small town cop following the trail of some festive homicides – there's an element of 'which santa did it?' before all the feverish speculation gives way to that hoary genre touchstone, the urban myth, in this case that one about the evil santa with the flame thrower (no, me neither). This kind of material is vulnerable to a slightly arch approach let's say, but, whilst there was a blackly comedic aspect to the proceedings, I think 'Silent Night' did admirably well in reigning this in and relegating it to a couple of gore gags and the hilariously out of place Malcolm McDowall, who with a kind of stoic grace spat out lines which at times seemed deliberately contrived to sound as though they should come from anyone's mouth but his. Aside from this merriment, 'Silent Night' actually came across as pretty mean spirited and grimly sadistic – good. Some of the kills were quite vicious and a surprisingly dour tone held sway in between blood lettings. I'm a fan of the original, and I really liked this one too. An example of little finds that come courtesy of other labber's reviews (cheers, Dem).

So pleased you enjoyed it Frankie.

It's really nice to know people are inspired to seek out movies which are reviewed in this thread. I should know i've picked up loads thanks to people like Frankie Teardrop and Keirarts.