What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[iank]

Went to the cinema today to see John Wick 2. The first one was a pretty solid flick, and this got good reviews, so I was expecting this to just as good but I'm afraid I was rather disappointed by it. The action is well staged, if a bit too well staged at times (as in, very obviously choreographed) but the plot and characterisation are even thinner than the first one. I just found myself not particularly giving a crap about any of it in the end. Ho hum.*

[Justin101]

Originally Posted by J Harker

The script frequently descends into almost surreal levels of comedy, for me it actually worked but if you didnt like the first one i can see you hating this one ... If you like the first or Marvel on the whole then buckle up you'll have a fairly good time. Otherwise I'd suggest giving it a miss.

I agree with your review and your dialogue with Treb about Russell, but I have to point out I was completely on the side of 'meh' when it comes to the first film and I almost didn't go and see this because of it but I had a whale of a time. I think that I appreciated the scope widening a bit by giving the supporting cast pretty good roles this time.

[keirarts]

Black moon

A woman driving down a country road strikes a badger. She is then confronted by a road block of gas mask wearing stormtroopers. Eventually she is forced off road and makes her way to a chateu where she is confronted by a bed ridden, infantalised old woman fixated on breasts and her two children. She also begins to persue an elusive unicorn.
Louis Malle's surrealist drama is a difficult film to pidgeonhole beyond pointing out its firm rooting in European surrealism. Its starts out as a dystopian sci-fi, with warring paramilitary stlye shock troops. As the young female protagonist heads further 'in country' the film then becomes more of a folk horror. Half the cast seem to be animals, the actuial dialogue is minimal and makes little sense when it occurs. If anything it appears to be a pouring out of the subconcious onto celluloid and the end result is baffling if not strangely compelling.

The Magician

Max von sydow plays Dr Vogler, the head of a travelling troupe called Vogler's Magnetic Health Theater, who travel the country putting on shows of mesmerism and magic, as well as selling various health remedies to the crowds. Detained at Stockholm as they cross the border, Vogler and his troupe are detained by the authorities and forced to demonstrate their 'abilities'. The rational authorities are not only skeptical, subscribing to modern scientific principals but also condecending and outright rude and hostile to their guests. Vogler, driven to anger at this concocts a revenge that is genuinely sinister.
Its best to go into Bergmansd film not knowing what to expect. It was my first time with it having picked up the criterion Blu-ray at a good price. I can happily reccomended the film as one of his best. While not actively promoting superstitions, the film is scathing of people who actively dismiss the imagination and the comforts superstitions can bring. It's also a brilliant piece of misdirection with a revenge scheme that is genuinely well played and feels worthy of the great final scenes of films like Les Diaboliques.

[Demoncrat]

Originally Posted by MrBarlow

Don't knock twice 2017

Jess is trying to reconnect with her estranged daughter, chloe. But Chloe is a bit of a rebel. One night Chloe and her friend decide to check out a old urban legend by knocking on a door of a abandoned house allegedly owned by a witch.

This film has a made up urban legend like Dead Silence.
Shot entirely in and around Cardiff this is one heck of a good horror movie it does have a few jump scenes and blink and miss it. If you like ghost stories and watch them in the dark this is one to add. 8.5 out of 10.

The film with Starbuck? Cried with laughter. Great final image though....

[trebor8273]

Replacing the claustrophobic tension of the first with plenty of kick ass action and many memorable scenes and lines, and a kick ass Ripley who makes Arnie,Sly and the rest of them look like a bunch of pussies. As mentioned elsewhere along with the terminator, Cameron's best movies by far. Even at nearly two and half hours it fly's by and doesn't drag. A classic 10/10

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Digging Up the Marrow (2014)

Said by some to be a documentary. It's not, it's a shaky cam film with a different slant.

Adam Green is a director i like. Of his output i've seen so far i loved Hatchet and also Frozen, but thought Hatchet 2 was a mess. What i do like about Green is his infectious enthusiasm for horror films and his delight at working in a genre he loves.

Why have i written the above statement about Green you might ask if you've never seen Digging up the Marrow? Well, because Green is both the director and the film's star along with Ray Wise. From the opening credits we are in Green's presence just as we are for every single scene of the movie. So any dislike towards the guy and you may as well not even bother with Digging up the Marrow. The other protagonist is Ray Wise, an actor many will know from Twin Peaks. Wise and Green are excellent together. Wise switching from friendly to intense, sometimes in the same sentence, and Green occasionally looking bemused and worried as he edgily negotiates with this oddball of a man.

The film is fairly straightforward. A middle aged man (Ray Wise) living out in the wilds sends Green a letter asking to meet because he has seen and would like to document an underground (literally) society of monsters or as Wise suggests mutant humans. Green and a camera man visit Wise and attempt to film the mutants.

The film is interesting but not wholly original. The underground network of mutants i felt smacked of Clive Barker and his novel Nightbreed, and of course shaky cam films are old hat in terms of horror cinema. However, this is professionally made, meaning you won't come away feeling sick or annoyed that you just spent 90 minutes staring at the ground.

Digging out the Marrow feels like an experimental film, as with all experimental films it may not work for you. However it did for me. It's not particularly scary nor graphic in any way. What it does is give the viewer an eye into the world of low (ish) budget film making and also of the world of fan horror as various horror celebs pop up including Mick Garris who gives us a revelatory moment and Kane Hodder, whom Green calls on to examine the footage of the creatures.

As the credits rolled it felt like i'd just watched a personal film for Green, not a vanity project, but a film he wanted to make for himself and for other film makers.

Recommended but with a degree of caution that it might not be for you.

[bleakshaun]

mate brought 2 films over last night
Salo (120 Days of Sodom)
Pasolini's final movie, the films is set between 1944-45 and 4 men - President, Duke, bishop and Magistrate, choose to kidnap 9 boys and 9 girls and submit them to torture and sexual degradation.
It's been 6 years since i saw this film, and I barely remembered a lot, the film is absolutely disturbing and there are certain sequences within it where you don't know if it is real. i watched this in english dub and i will say this - don't
7/10

The Canterbury Tales
another Pasolini film, the film is a compilation of short tales.
this film I never really understood, there's moments where it's funny but the humour makes little to know sense, the audio is bad even on blu ray, me and my mate had to mute it just because it was so loud.
5/10

[Frankie Teardrop]

THE DEMON'S ROOK – Some guy who looks a bit like jesus emerges from a neon-lit underground hell to take on a bunch of zombies and demons in this indie outing eager to declare its love for the eighties. Unlike, for example, 'The Void' (the writer of which directed the film in question), the aesthetics of 'The Demon's Rook' lie squarely within the realm of contemporary American microbudget horror – it just can't hide that sterile, shot on hi-def-for-f*ck-all look. Not that I hold that against it really, for there's a lot of love on display. The effects and gore, which are plentiful, are all labour intensive prosthetics, and the film has enough of a sense of itself as an object of care and attention to include its own demonic mythos, even if that does amount to a few guys in rubber masks who live down a hole in the forest. Where it fails slightly is in issues of pacing, dynamics etc, because to me it felt a bit baggy and could've done with a good ten or twenty minutes shaved off (jesus guy wandering endlessly in that forest – I'm looking at you, dude). But I'm being a little churlish in saying that, as the monster attacks are fairly relentless when they get going, and its just nice to see a creature driven, graphic horror flick that isn't afraid to be pretty irrational. Recommended.

THE ABOMINATION – Another labour of love from the eighties, when horror geeks were doing it for themselves armed with super-eight and an intense fixation on rubber monster effects. 'The Abomination' is obviously the result of an extended viewing of a pile of VHS tapes consisting mainly of David Cronenberg flicks, 'The Thing', and 'The Deadly Spawn'. Whilst it can't hope to emulate the chilly strangeness of DC or the biomorphic bonanza of TT, it shares something with 'The Deadly Spawn' in the sense that both are coming from the same corner, being backyard productions with a gleefully toothy love of splatter. 'The Abomination' is about a regular guy whose mother, by some unknowable mechanism supposedly influenced by a TV evangelist, develops a demonic lung tumour with a mind of its own. She coughs it up, it crawls inside son and basically a load of bargain basement special effects happen involving monster creations resembling, sorry to mention it for a third time, something out of 'The Deadly Spawn'. Whether you get into 'The Abomination' or not will depend on your tolerance for the usual issues affecting low low budget and shot-on-video stuff from the eighties, namely extreme clunkiness and boredom. Yep, there are some nice scenes of wild splatter, but this is a feature length film made up mostly of people wandering around doing things, and kind of taking their time about it. There is the slightly wacky concept, the moments of offal busting, the casio electro score and the beyond-cheap aesthetics, which I happen to quite like, all of which lend 'The Abomination' a certain atmosphere and an ambience, but I'm under no illusion that less patient genre fans won't glaze over at points. It could all work as an exercise in claustrophobic cardboard minimalism... or not. There are plenty of films of the same ilk that are quite mesmerising in their strangeness – Nathan Schiff, Nick Millard, 'Things' etc. 'The Abomination' doesn't quite get there. Despite appearances, it's too 'normal'. But there's still enjoyment to be had. You have to pretty much dig this stuff on its own terms, as it can make for quite a flat and detached viewing experience when approached with the wrong set of expectations – I guess the same can be said for any number of badly made flicks of yore, H G Lewis being the ultimate example in a way. On the other hand, it's amazing that films like this exist, testament to the power of picking up a camera and sticking it to The Man. One to track down if you're into this kind of thing.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Killjoy (2000)

A right pile of shite. Amateur hour at best, no one can remotely act, the effects are dreadful, the only semi decent thing is the Killjoy clown's make up.

Definitely one of the worst films ever made.

[trebor8273]

About to watch this in memory of Sir Roger Moore. RIP.