What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[Nosferatu@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by iank

Life. Gravity meets Alien in this sci-fi horror flick starring Ryan Reynolds, Rebecca Ferguson and Jake Gyllenhaal. A team on the International Space Station are studying samples from Mars when they find a living organism among them - a microscopic single-cell life form that confirms the existence of life elsewhere in the universe. Of course, being that sort of movie, it doesn't stay microscopic for long... This is a terrific, intense, exciting and scary SF chiller that I really enjoyed. Criticisms that this is "just like Alien" are most unfair IMO - it's a monster movie on a spaceship so yeah there's gonna be similarities, but blimey it's been nearly 40 years since Alien, are you telling me we can't ever do that genre again?! (I'm willing to put money on this being better than Alien:Covenant too

I saw it today and echo everything you said. It must be very tough for filmmakers to do anything original with a film set in space, so this is Gravity meets Alien meets Solaris and Sunshine, with a nice reference to Re-Animator thrown in. An additional difficulty is the shortage of A-listers who haven't either been sent into space or been involved in an extra-planetary escapade in some capacity, whether it is leaving Earth or, such as a member of mission control, instrumental in its organisation and monitoring.

Although I've thoroughly enjoyed Life, I hope this, and the upcoming Alien: Covenant is the end of the current extra-planetary sci-fi sci-fi films (though highly enjoyable and excellent films such as the aforementioned and others including The Martian and Interstellar are very real watchable). As I said, there is a limit to the number of stories available without making a film which can easily be dismissed as a rip-off so, just as the slasher genre went through a lull before being reborn with Scream, perhaps it is time to give space a rest and even, if Arrival is any indication, stick to occasional films featuring alien visitors.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

The Last of the Mohicans (1992)

An absolute masterpiece which gets better and better.

Last seen, April last year. See review - What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[Demoncrat]

Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs

The Last of the Mohicans (1992)

An absolute masterpiece which gets better and better.

Last seen, April last year. See review - What Films Have You Seen Recently?

A film I've never seen ....



McVicar (1980, Tom Clegg)
Tommy's all grown up now. He can even go to the bank on his own now ... him and his jolly chums ... kneecapping anyone who gives them 'lip'. Geezers. I am sick to DEATH of them. I think I may have found a prime source right here for tropes and all that.
Various Eastenders ping in and out of vision ....and the songs !! If only it had been JG Ballard
Ahem.
Look, I bleedin' mean it squire.

[J Harker]

For some reason i was positive I'd reviewed this week's ago.

The Salvation. Kristian Levring. 2014.

Jon and his brother Peter are Dutch immigrants seeking a peaceful life in 1870's America. Jon has been focusing on building up a successful farming business in preparation for his wife and son to join him from the Netherlands.
After several years he finally manages to make that happen only to see his son killed and his wife brutally raped and murdered by a small time outlaw less than 24 hours after their reunion. This is where we see that despite his peaceful ambitions Jon is no stranger to violence as he unflinchingly empties the contents of a shotgun into said rapey bandits.
Unfortunately it turns out that the brother of one of the bad guys is anything but small time and turns out ro be ultra ruthless psychotic land baron Henry Delarue played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan. Betrayed by the cowardly townsfolk Jon is captured and handed over to Delarue in exchange for not massacring more innocent locals than he feels necessary. Jon's brother Peter manages to rescue him but gets himself killed in the process and from here on Jon goes Rambo as he wages all out war on Delarue and his men. A Dutch production lensed in South Africa The Salvation is clearly a low budget film. There are even some ropey cgi bullet holes scattered throughout. That said I stuck this film on late one night not expecting much and I found myself really engrossed. There is an almost post apocalyptic feel to proceedings with large chunks of the film taking place in some of the dryest dirtiest dustiest looking settings I've ever seen. Jeffrey Dean Morgan is basically doing a dry run for Negan here, just missing the constant grinning and smirking. The lovely Eva Green is also along for the ride too as Delarue's mistress the mute Madelaine, a villainess with secrets of her own. Don't expect miracles from The Salvation and hopefully you will be rewarded.

[Frankie Teardrop]

THE HILLS HAVE EYES – It's cannibals versus the suburbs in Craven's dust bowl chiller from '77. A whitebread American family head out into the desert and, ending up stranded in a military testing zone, find themselves at the mercy of a clan of flesh eating thieves. THHE benefits from windswept locations and an eerie synthesiser score, both ramping up the atmosphere of pulsating menace as M Berryman et al set about picking off them thar city folk. THHE was clearly made in the shadow of TCM, a film which surpasses it on the level of raw horror and emotional savagery. In some ways though, THHE is a slightly more thoughtful meditation on the violence that lies at the heart of conventional society, a line which Craven takes up from his controversial debut more than TCM. I do prefer the go-for-the-jugular sleaze of 'Last House on the Left', and you can see that with THHE Craven was trying to court a wider audience. But the film's no less effective for that, and, whilst it maybe can't be considered top ranking seventies horror, it's within spitting distance.

SCALPS – A Fred Olen Ray film from before the time when everything he churned out was sub-Troma camp. Seriousness in horror does have its virtues, but doesn't automatically guarantee a good movie. 'Scalps' isn't very good, objectively speaking, but I like it. I won't spend much time on it here as I've reviewed it before in the last two or three years, but I did happen to watch the newish blu ray the other day and was pleasantly surprised to find that my memories of its stark, weird atmosphere were confirmed. On the downside, 'Scalps' offers shoddy construction, bad editing / acting and is arguably boring for a big part of its run time. However, it ties in with 'The Hills Have Eyes' in that it manages to generate quite a sinister tone just by dint of its eerie desert locations and discordant electronic soundtrack. On top of this, it has this freaky Indian demon guy with a horribly gnarled face running around doing the slashing, aided and abetted by odd supernatural visuals. Cheesy maybe, but with an underlying grimness. I was really spooked out by the first few minutes, too, with that lion-headed spirit waiting on the hillside. Funny how some flicks just get under your skin.

AMERICAN PSYCHO – Mary Harron's adaption of the Brett Easton Ellis novel has a lot going for it, but veracity to the source material probably isn't one. Not that the book was very filmable – it's power in one sense lay in something pretty abstract, in the clash between numbingly repetitive descriptions of consumer status goods and splashes of porno-violence. Thankfully, Harron manages to stay faithful to the satirical tone of the novel by taking it on as a chilly, alienated black comedy, and it's good that she did that because a genre approach wouldn't have worked and a full-on avant garde one probably wouldn't have even been made. C Bale is pretty good as Bateman, the plastic narcissist who likes to chop up hookers to the strains of Hewey Lewis and the News, and the film delivers an effective portrayal of the strange, dehumanised world of Yuppie America at the tail end of the eighties. We have yet to emerge from the shadows of that time – prophetically, there are at least two references to Donald Trump years before his political 'ascendency'. Anyway, soapboxing aside, you can't speak ill of a film which features three way shagging soundtracked by P Collins' 'Sussudio'.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Manhunt (2007)

Grueling Norwegian survival horror in which four young people are hunted in remote woods by a band of backwoods locals.

In truth there's nothing here that you won't have seen before and the plot is quite conventional. What is different is the whole thing is laugh free. There's no humour, no camp thrills, Don't go looking for fun here, for Manhunt is an atmospheric horror film, with a slow burn beginning that transforms into something that is hard to watch on the lines of Last House on the Left with relentless terror and brutality.

A film liked the previously reviewed Severance, Botched and Wilderness, that i keep coming back to time and again.

Manhunt would never have survived the 80's uncut. Recommended to those who enjoy Backwoods Horror.

[Rik]

Duly noted, I love Wilderness (as we've discussed previously on here), so I'll look out for this.

[Demoncrat]

Originally Posted by gag

IMO they just don't make films as good as they use to , even the acting was different and better . a lot of today's film might be film or Blockbuster of the year , but still prefer the older movies , take films like oliver twist , wizard of oz, hunchback of Notre dame, Spartacus , peeping tom just a few but there loads of old films that still stand test of time for how old they are when they didn't have the technology they have today . give me films like these etc from 40s to the 70s \ 80s over most films of today , look how affective and atmospheric quatermass films and 10 Rillington place are and they just can't quite make films as effective nowadays IMO , shame really if they took a leaf out of the old film industry instead of CGI , big is better crashbang wallop attitude then films would be better its all about big budgets who who in the films special effects and all that malarky ..I guess that's part of why a lot of j horrors work because they don't have the budget etc and concentrate more on story , atmosphere, tension, build up all that type of palaver.

Cough
Bone Tomahawk
The Interior
The Duke Of Burgundy

To name but 3 modern films that have impressed me. So there's that. Old films, new films, some are great, some are ferking awful. I've seen plenty of older films that weren't much cop to be frank....On Golden Pond for one

[Demoncrat]

Originally Posted by Frankie Teardrop

THE HILLS HAVE EYES – It's cannibals versus the suburbs in Craven's dust bowl chiller from '77. A whitebread American family head out into the desert and, ending up stranded in a military testing zone, find themselves at the mercy of a clan of flesh eating thieves. THHE benefits from windswept locations and an eerie synthesiser score, both ramping up the atmosphere of pulsating menace as M Berryman et al set about picking off them thar city folk. THHE was clearly made in the shadow of TCM, a film which surpasses it on the level of raw horror and emotional savagery. In some ways though, THHE is a slightly more thoughtful meditation on the violence that lies at the heart of conventional society, a line which Craven takes up from his controversial debut more than TCM. I do prefer the go-for-the-jugular sleaze of 'Last House on the Left', and you can see that with THHE Craven was trying to court a wider audience. But the film's no less effective for that, and, whilst it maybe can't be considered top ranking seventies horror, it's within spitting distance.

SCALPS – A Fred Olen Ray film from before the time when everything he churned out was sub-Troma camp. Seriousness in horror does have its virtues, but doesn't automatically guarantee a good movie. 'Scalps' isn't very good, objectively speaking, but I like it. I won't spend much time on it here as I've reviewed it before in the last two or three years, but I did happen to watch the newish blu ray the other day and was pleasantly surprised to find that my memories of its stark, weird atmosphere were confirmed. On the downside, 'Scalps' offers shoddy construction, bad editing / acting and is arguably boring for a big part of its run time. However, it ties in with 'The Hills Have Eyes' in that it manages to generate quite a sinister tone just by dint of its eerie desert locations and discordant electronic soundtrack. On top of this, it has this freaky Indian demon guy with a horribly gnarled face running around doing the slashing, aided and abetted by odd supernatural visuals. Cheesy maybe, but with an underlying grimness. I was really spooked out by the first few minutes, too, with that lion-headed spirit waiting on the hillside. Funny how some flicks just get under your skin.

AMERICAN PSYCHO – Mary Harron's adaption of the Brett Easton Ellis novel has a lot going for it, but veracity to the source material probably isn't one. Not that the book was very filmable – it's power in one sense lay in something pretty abstract, in the clash between numbingly repetitive descriptions of consumer status goods and splashes of porno-violence. Thankfully, Harron manages to stay faithful to the satirical tone of the novel by taking it on as a chilly, alienated black comedy, and it's good that she did that because a genre approach wouldn't have worked and a full-on avant garde one probably wouldn't have even been made. C Bale is pretty good as Bateman, the plastic narcissist who likes to chop up hookers to the strains of Hewey Lewis and the News, and the film delivers an effective portrayal of the strange, dehumanised world of Yuppie America at the tail end of the eighties. We have yet to emerge from the shadows of that time – prophetically, there are at least two references to Donald Trump years before his political 'ascendency'. Anyway, soapboxing aside, you can't speak ill of a film which features three way shagging soundtracked by P Collins' 'Sussudio'.

As always, I bow to your mighty pen F!!

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Rik

Duly noted, I love Wilderness (as we've discussed previously on here), so I'll look out for this.

it's a 1p special on Amazon, Rik.