What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[keirarts]

Kingdom of the spiders

Not one for Aachnophobes, Kingdom stars William shatner as a vet who teams up with a hot insect expert played by Tiffany Bolling in order to stop an Invasion of deadly spiders displaced from their natural habitat through the use of pesticides. These days a film like this would be purely CG but here it uses genuine spiders in every scene dousing the cast in torrents of tarantulas at every given opportunity. Director John "Bud" Cardos delivers the goods in a brilliantly directed, well paced and surprisingly harsh nature gone amok film.


Nightcrawler

Jake Gyllenhall plays an outright sociopath who Decides he's going to corner the market in crime scene footage for local news. Fortunately he lacks any sense of ethics or morality so he quickly rises to the top. Possibly one of my top 10 films from 2014 it still holds up today. Gyllenhall plays a classic screen psycho and the film is great at ratcheting up the tension in scenes like the aftermath of the home invasion and the final pursuit of the criminals.

[gag]

https://www.theguardian.com/film/201...-uk-box-office
Emma watsons new film only made £47
Not sure where to post this.

Personaly i honestly dont believe things like this.
Ok to say a film major flopped is one thing, but to say film made less than £100 in opening weekend is one hell of a statement.
Even if it states only got released at 3 cinemas
But personaly what did they expect?
I mean 3 cinemas????
Whats that all about. Thats roughly 2 people in each cinema.

[Cinematic Shocks]

Der Fan (1982)

**** out of *****

[iank]

Originally Posted by gag

https://www.theguardian.com/film/201...-uk-box-office
Emma watsons new film only made £47
Not sure where to post this.

Personaly i honestly dont believe things like this.
Ok to say a film major flopped is one thing, but to say film made less than £100 in opening weekend is one hell of a statement.
Even if it states only got released at 3 cinemas
But personaly what did they expect?
I mean 3 cinemas????
Whats that all about. Thats roughly 2 people in each cinema.

It was also available On Demand from the month before that release.
I believe this is what is known as a "non-story".

[bizarre_eye@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Cinematic Shocks

Der Fan (1982)

**** out of *****

Awesome film. Glad to see you rate it as highly as I do.

[Frankie Teardrop]

LOVE ME DEADLY – Whilst explorations of necrophilia aren't exactly unknown in the genre, 'Love Me Deadly' stands out as being somehow one of the most affecting. It doesn't go for the horror hard-on like 'Nekromantik', 'Lucker' or 'Beyond the Darkness', but, in its low key way 'Love Me Deadly' seems more sickly than any of the above. Mary Wilcox features as a young woman with an addiction to funeral services. She's a bit coy about her unwholesome stirrings, and tends to limit her own necro activity to the odd kiss snatched at the side of a casket. It may be difficult to swallow, but her fave funeral parlour is host to an underground society of necrophiliacs headed by the local mortician, and it isn't long before before the former parties are scoping her out as a potential inductee. On the plus side, Mary's perhaps more 'overground' love life presents her with an opportunity to get down with a nice gallerist – he looks a bit like her dad, though... 'Love Me Deadly' is, as I mentioned above, pretty restrained in terms of graphics, but is just so 'off' in tone. From the outset, we're aware of the incestuous daddy connection through a series of sepia tinted childhood flashbacks. They cast a shadow throughout the movie, and, whilst these sequences are a bit heavy handed, they are also eerie, especially near the end of the film. There are a few other moments which are genuinely disturbing – for example, the rent boy murder that occurs in the first twenty minutes or so, a scene which had me really on edge. Typically for a seventies semi-grindhouse feature, this intensity isn't really sustained, and large parts of the movie are taken up with the lead character trying to find (legit) romance to the sound of a swingin' easy listening soundtrack. These atmospheric shifts are somehow accommodated by the whole however, and in fact 'Love Me Deadly' has a kind of languorous flow to it where scenes simply drift into one another without all that much heed for consistency of either plot or tone etc etc. It's all about feel, and 'Love Me Deadly' 'feels' like few other films I've seen recently. Definitely recommended, you may find it slow burn if you're after something more harcore, but 'Love Me Deadly' is certainly creepy enough to cut it even these days. Plus, being from the groovy age of horror it has its own theme tune (as in song, with relevant lyrics)! Wish they did that kind of thing these days.

[Deadite]

Well, Heavy Metal finally arrived (took its own sweet time though) and i watched it tonight. It was a strange experience to be honest. I sort of knew what to expect going into it, and it predictably struck me as puerile in places (all right, in most places), with pneumatic animated tits galore. Yet, i couldn't help be swept up in nostalgia as it played out - its like a time-capsule of the period, aided and abetted by a killer soundtrack. By the end of the film i found myself strangely inspired, as though my mid-teens were rushing back at me.

Now where's my +5 vorpal sword?

3 1/2 out of 5.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Visions (2015)

A young couple, including expectant mother, Isla Fisher, buy an old vineyard deep in the Californian hills. It's not long before Fisher starts seeing things, ghosts from the past, and the feeling that all may not be as idyllic at the vineyard as the couple hoped.

Visions had a promising concept however the overriding feeling as it played out was one of complete emotional unattachment and the feeling that the usually reliable Fisher was wasted by a script that offered nothing aside from by the numbers plotting and uninspired direction.

Despite the film coming to a satisfying conclusion, all that precedes in the build up is tired and cliched. It's as though the director had a checklist and made sure he ticked each and every box - hallucinations, tick, odd neighbours, tick... Even the films two biggest selling points Fisher's co-stars Jim Parsons (The Big Bang Theory) and Eva Longoria between them barely have enough screen time to register.

So whilst the story itself is really not that bad, Visions lacks vision in all other departments and ends up watchable but very run of the mill.

[iank]

I think you mean Big Bang Theory, not 3rd Rock.

[keirarts]

Black Dhalia

For me the combination of James ellroy & Brian DePalma works far too well for me not to like it, however I can evisiage people complaining about some pacing issues. Aaron Eckhart & Josh Hartnett play LA cops drawn into the real-life Black Dhalia mystery while dealing with the typical LA corruption. Eckharts character is locked in a downward spiral obsessed with the murder and hiding a dark secret from his partner while Hartnett is torn between his partners wife (scarlett johansson) & a rich bisexual socialite played by Hilary Swank. Talk about difficult choices!
Pacing issues aside, DePalma delivers his typical virtusos camerawork and set pieces, the cast is mainly decent and I genuinely have a soft spot for the setting (see also Chinatown, LA confidential ect). Overall if you like DePalma its well worth seeking out.

Black Rain

Michael Douglas plays a potentially bent new york copper investigated by internal affairs. with his laid back partner, played by Andy Garcia, they are tasked with transporting a prisoner back to Japan. Upon arrival they end up handing their prisoner to disguised Yakuza and must navigate late eighties Japan.
Possibly Ridley Scotts last great film (unless you rate Gladiator) its filmed in a pre bubble crash Japan, an over-ripe neon Tokyo that feels ripped direct from Blade Runner. Add in some great Japanese casting the film is a slick, beautiful thriller that remains entertaining today.


Sole Survivor

A crashed American world war 2 bomber somewhere in the Lybian desert is haunted by its crew who are unable to rest due to their bodies being lost. When the Airforce come to finally claim the plane it looks like the crw might be able to pass on but their navigator who bailed out and survived in an act of cowardice seems determined they dont recover the crew in order to support his lies about what happened. The dead crew must find a way to pursuade the team to find them. This one is a terrific 70's TV movie with a compelling story and a great transfer on blu-ray by mediumrare.