What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[gag]

Originally Posted by nosferatu42

I think some of it is down to cinema's as well some of whom only book big budget blockbuster films.
My local didn't even have Trainspotting 2, twats, i'm sure that would have brought some people in due to the reputation of the original, stars and director.

Also doesn't help any when cinema with eg 10 screens show one particular film on 2\3 screens for the first week.. When they could be showing other films on these screen.
Not everyone into superhero films ..

[nosferatu42]

Where i am they're building a multi screen cinema in the local shopping precinct soon.
The local 3 screen cinema (that is just around the corner) is gonna have to go down the independent/ cult route hopefully to survive (if they've got any sense), otherwise they are going to be totally screwed.

[Nosferatu@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs

Sci-fi has been in a bit of a golden period recently with films like Interstellar, The Martian and Gravity being three examples, so the stories are out there, they just need to be gambled on.

Add Arrival to that list – a brilliant film from Ted Chiang's superb short story 'Story of Your Life'.

[gag]

Originally Posted by nosferatu42

Where i am they're building a multi screen cinema in the local shopping precinct soon.
The local 3 screen cinema (that is just around the corner) is gonna have to go down the independent/ cult route hopefully to survive (if they've got any sense), otherwise they are going to be totally screwed.

Know exactly what you mean, we had a cinema in Blackburn in a old building and had 3 screens and was the main cinema in Blackburn, remember going there as a young child, one year they expanded it and made it into a 5 cinema and showed main blockbuster on big screen while rest where on smaller screen..then they would move that film to smaller screen if still popular for the newest or latest film to be shown on big screen ..it was always packed and cheaply priced as well.
Around 15 year they built a multiplex vue cinema . can't remember exactly how many screens it got I think 14.. Few years later the cinema that's been there for over 50yrs closed and everyone wasn't happy about it i still went there and supported it like a lot of people did , guess they felt they couldn't compete , find big business are forcing small businesses out and to close... They have only one interest and that's money and so many places like these big complexes are soulless places with soulless people who work there and only doing there job to earn a living ..where other places did it because they loved their work and was warm friendly and welcoming. Then becomes to point they have the monopoly where only place for people to go and watch a film and charge ridiculous prices for everything.

[nosferatu42]

The White Reindeer (1952)

wrd.jpg



Stumbled across this somewhere on the internet, looked it up and it sounded interesting so bought the above dvd.
A little known Finnish film that was apparently shown at Cannes at the time and won a golden globe award but has since faded into obscurity.

Set in a small community living in a snowy bleak landscape, where not much seems to go on that doesn't involve reindeers, the locals herd them, hunt them and race them.
During a race a man and woman end up falling down a hill together and falling in love, he asks her father for her hand and they get married, so everything's great right? well no actually.
He has to go off for long spells in to the wilderness hunting i guess, so the wife is left alone and lonely.

It's not long before she goes to a local shaman type bloke and asks him to make her a spell, i thought it was to make her husband stay with her at first but it seems to have the effect of getting all the blokes around to fancy her.
To get the spell to work she sacrifices a reindeer at a shrine surrounded by reindeer horns.

A side effect is that she ends up turning into a reindeer on occasions and luring men off and killing them.
So what we have here is essentially a werewolf type story of a curse and transformations. But the young woman spouts fangs in certain scenes (do reindeer have fangs??) so in some scenes she seems vampiric.

The story is told from the wife's perspective so we feel for her and watch as she goes through the realisation that she is cursed, the actress gives a nice performance that i found mesmerising.
The lighting in the creepier scenes is dark and shadowy and i found these moments quite striking.
The landscape is shot beautifully and the life and customs of the rural inhabitants is interesting and that gives the film a really unusual feel.
There is also a haunting song that adds a lot of atmosphere to certain scenes.

The story is slight and the film is pretty short at just over an hour but i really enjoyed it, there isn't any effects in the transformation scenes and no bloodletting, but instead we get a nuanced, folklore/fairytale style film with horror elements.

I really enjoyed it and would recommend it to film fans who enjoy the old Universal black and white horror / Val Lewton films or world cinema.

The dvd i have is pictured above, it has a pretty decent picture and english subtitles.

I loved it. 9/10

[bizarre_eye@Cult Labs]

I really rate that one too, Nos.

I watched a wonky Youtube print of it a few years ago and fell in love with it.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by bizarre_eye@Cult Labs

I really rate that one too, Nos.

I watched a wonky Youtube print of it a few years ago and fell in love with it.

I think i might pick up a copy for this years DD.

I have heard of it before, it's in the Aurum Horror encyclopedia for 1952. Trust me when i say you remember horrors from 52. There were only 6 and two of them were Finnish.

[nosferatu42]

The other Finnish one was "Return of the witch/witch returns", really want to see that properly it's on youtube without subtitles.

[J Harker]

Does sound interesting. £8 on Amazon.

[Cinematic Shocks]

Long Weekend (1978)

***1/2 out of *****