What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by trebor8273

Well I can't decide what to watch next more horror in the form of plague of the zombies or a western with support your local sheriff

Sheriff definitely. It's a gem. Wait till you see the jail and useless Walter Brennan's attempts to bust it. Then of course there's the brilliant Jack Elam as the deputy.

[keirarts]

Right.. rather than go back over the mountain of films I've been watching I'm going to do yesterdays viewings...

Suicide squad

Problems? Yeah this film has its fair share. Going through the deleted scenes for example (there is a LOT of them detailed online) Harley Quinn/Joker relationship was much more abusive and her character arc came across more as her getting her independence from Mr J and finding a new set of friends. Tying in with deadshots almost fatherly concern for her in the final half this would make a lot more sense. It's been cut down however and now its all about her & joker being soul mates and becomes more of a love story. Its an Interesting change but the Joker now comes across as some sort of Twilight-esque romantic figure rather than the clown prince of crime which sort of irritated me. Harley herself is great but I felt sorry for her as her costume looked dreadfully uncomfortable. Deadshot is great, its one of Will Smiths best gigs in a while. Jai Courtney actually finally manages to be good in something as Captain Boomerang. Killer Croc was done well (some ropey CGI aside.) Amanda waller is terrific, so is Rick Flagg.
Compared to Batman V superman the film is Marvels civil war, its a much better film than that mess. BVS was a series of sometimes cool scenes strung together by a mess of a script and a dreadful villain that really irritated the f**k out of me. Suicide Squad is a straigh ahead action flick that goes from A-Z without any saggy moments of crucial plot points left on the cutting room floor. David Ayer is a much better film-maker than Zac Snyder. Synder clearly read all the Frank miller Batman and came up with some cool interesting scenes inspired (lifted) from millers Graphic novels with very little idea on what to do with them. Ayer has said 'screw that' and focused on delivering a solid action film. Its not great, as pointed out on this thread its clearly a film thats been tampered with and some stuff falls flat on its face but its a genuine step in the right direction for DC.

The Blob

In the pantheon of terrific remakes, this one remains an awful lot of fun courtesy of Frank Darabont and Chuck Russell who take the 50's B classic and give it a gory re-invention. The Blu-ray for it is almost too good in places as the rear screen projection for some of the Blob scenes is a bit too apparant. It's still a worthy pick-up until somone decides to create some special features and release a special edition but it'll do for now.

Night of the living dead 90

A great double bill with The Blob, Savini's remake got largely ignored on release but has built up something of a following over the years. Savini does a good job directing and the film manages to create a grimm atmosphere but George A Romeros script really helps sell it as not just a remake of the original but as a companion as well. The real departure for the film is the depiction of Barbara who is transformed from mute to tough as nails action chick. Making her the focus of the film transforms the dynamic in some interesting ways as now the squabbling between Harry cooper and Ben now feels much more destructive and pointless. The Aussie blu-ray is solidly presented and worth a look.

[bizarre_eye@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by trebor8273

Descent into hell- end of the line

A group of people get stuck on a train and are attacked be another group who end up killing those they meet in very brutal and bloody fashion believing the apocalypse has come and they are saving the souls of those they kill. A game of cat and mouse developes between the two groups but could their be something sinister happing. Acting goes from dreadful to OK, but its fast paced with a lot of gore and a lot worse ways to spend 90minutes. 5.5/10

I really like End of the Line.

[bizarre_eye@Cult Labs]

Last week's viewings:

Loads of slasher-trash again, a long overdue re-watch of the entertaining The Relic, and the high-light of the week being last night's virgin viewing of the gothic fairy-tale Crimson Peak. Whilst a little clunky in places, I really enjoyed the story and the haunting atmosphere - a future purchase for sure.

Graveyard Disturbance (Una notte al cimitero) (1987)



58/100


Night Screams (1987)



47/100


Hell High (1986)



57/100


Time Walker (1982)



55/100


Terror on Tour (1980)



46/100


Honeymoon Horror (1982)



43/100


Doom Asylum (1987)



55/100


Houseboat Horror (1989)



29/100


Silent Madness (1984)



47/100


Blood Tracks (1985)



42/100


Fatal Pulse (1988)



42/100


The Night Brings Charlie (1990)



47/100


Return of the Family Man (1989)



56/100


The Relic (1997)



64/100


Hollywood's New Blood (1988)



24/100


Crimson Peak (2015)



73/100

[Frankie Teardrop]

BLOOD GNOME – The fetish community of downtown LA is being terrorised by an unseen killer. A nerdy phtographer with a tragic past is hot on the case. Invisible gremlin types who get off on blood sports, a tentacular slime beast that pushes out narcotic embryos and girls in bondage gear are all in evidence. 'Blood Gnome' is a microbudget horror film from around ten years ago, which was roughly when I last watched it. I remember thinking at the time, “an S/M flick with killer gnomes and a weird cthulhuvian monster – how can this not be the best film ever made?” Inevitably, my viewing experience went on to show that 'Blood Gnome' was not in fact the best film ever made, although it sounds undeniably impressive on paper. It's quite good fun, is in a way original and imaginative, but is too slight and meagre to do much with its quite 'heady' material, although what it actually does is to some extent cool. Erotica isn't the point here really and 'Blood Gnome' is distinctly in the DTV horror bracket rather than sub-porno... those looking for Andreas Bethmann type excesses had better go away, for 'Blood Gnome' is not particularly explicit in its expose of the BDSM scene, and the whole sex underground angle seems to have been pursued either for lip service novelty, or because the director just knew some dudes who were into that kind of stuff and wanted to let it all hang out on camera (a bit). Interestingly, although it's pretty tame, it does home in on blood letting fetishes (for narrative reasons more than anything else). S and M or no S and M, perhaps what it needed was a touch more of the madness suggested by the words 'invisible killer gnomes'. It's never less than watchable though, and ultimately 'Blood Gnome' is a winningly eccentric one of a kind that manages to stand out from the shitpile of no budget horror despite its shortcomings.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Frankie Teardrop

BLOOD GNOME –

I was delighted to add this to my Julie Strain collection...Then i watched it. Like yourself about 10 years ago. I was quite disappointed. It was bathed in that shot on video sunlight look where everything feels so artificial. I'd give it another go if i still owned it thanks to your enthusiasm but i don't so i won't.

Still it's way better than The Imp.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by keirarts

Night of the living dead 90

A great double bill with The Blob, Savini's remake got largely ignored on release but has built up something of a following over the years. Savini does a good job directing and the film manages to create a grimm atmosphere but George A Romeros script really helps sell it as not just a remake of the original but as a companion as well. The real departure for the film is the depiction of Barbara who is transformed from mute to tough as nails action chick. Making her the focus of the film transforms the dynamic in some interesting ways as now the squabbling between Harry cooper and Ben now feels much more destructive and pointless. The Aussie blu-ray is solidly presented and worth a look.

Patricia Tallman's constant whining and screaming makes this completely unwatchable for me. Horrible performance and a pointless remake. I'd prefer to watch the old colourized vhs than this remake.

[trebor8273]

Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs

Sheriff definitely. It's a gem. Wait till you see the jail and useless Walter Brennan's attempts to bust it. Then of course there's the brilliant Jack Elam as the deputy.

thats what i went for and you were right about the jail

[Demoncrat]

Originally Posted by Susan Foreman

Missed a trick there, Mr. Crat!

Indeed.

Pity I watched the film at all imo. Am sick of "avant" horror films. Some nice imagery though.

[Justin101]

This weekend's viewing has been what you could say is eclectic!

I've already talked about Friday's viewing Suicide Squad - not good, and my opinion of it is going down every time I think about it!

On Saturday I sat down for the 3 hour epic which is Andrei Rublev. It's a slow burn for sure, the polar opposite of Suicide Squad! In fact it was so slow to start with that I almost gave up after the 45 minute mark but it got better and better. It doesn't have a narrative arc but is split up into chapters which each concentrate on one aspect of Andrei's life. The final 3 chapters were the best, 'The Raid', 'The Silence' and finally 'The Bell'. In 'The Bell' we get the return of the young actor who played Ivan in Ivan's Childhood, and he was just as good in this segment as the son of a Bell-maker who's entire family has died of the plague, he lies to Andrei announcing that he alone knows the secret of making the perfect bell!
A lot of scholarly people pronounce this as a masterpiece, while I thought it was very good it was a little too meandering at the beginning for me to think it was perfection. It was very good though.

Sunday afternoon was the perfect time to crack open my cult-labs prize from last week Critters! It's been ages since I saw it and I totally got a kick out of how 80's it was. It's not a great film by any opinion but it's a load of fun. Billy Zane with his little rat's tail hair-do made me laugh I'm looking forward to part 2 - I'll probably take a look at that tomorrow evening!

I rounded off the weekend with Stanley Kubrick's The Killing, a film which I've never seen and I have to say what a way to end the weekend's viewing! While it's not as sophisticated as his later works it's interesting to see how his artistry has developed. Straight away we're plunged into the story, not knowing what's going on but utterly intrigued to see how it all plays out! It turns out to be quite the caper and didn't really end how you would expect it. That final scene had me shouting No at the TV screen . You've probably all seen it already but it's highly recommended. Arrow's BD looks bloody fantastic!