What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[Make Them Die Slowly]

Chemsex

Eye opening documentary about the use of GHB and crystal meth in gay sex. This is quite shocking in the nihilism of some of the people involved in the drug orgy scene...people wishing to get HIV early in their sex life to 'get it outta the way' People assuming everyone involved is HIV positive so no need to ever use protection. As the film progresses a series of talking heads discuss their sex and drug use intercut with a party in full swing. The party scenes are very graphic in sexual content and drug use...a mixture of blow jobs and people being injected flood the screen.

What is interesting when all the thrills and fun are removed from the subjective experience, all the people interviewed describe huge voids in their lives that can only be filled by drug and sex use. The feelings they say drugs and sex give them sounds very similar to romantic love. Sadly at the time if filming, a couple of years ago there was only one counsellor in the UK dealing with this specific issue. The man comes across as very humble but is a true life hero. Highly recommend.

[Susan Foreman]

Originally Posted by Make Them Die Slowly

DON'T KNOCK TWICE

A dogshit sandwich of a film.

Sounds like the review of Spinal Tap's seminal album 'Shark Sandwich'

[Make Them Die Slowly]

Originally Posted by Susan Foreman

Sounds like the review of Spinal Tap's seminal album 'Shark Sandwich'

That is where I pinched it from.

[trebor8273]

Good but not a top tier marvel. Tom Holland is spiderman, Keaton is great as usual even if he is a bit under used. The scenes with ironman/Stark are good and don't overshadow Spiderman. The last post credit scene is funny and a bit annoying. Lots of in jokes and easter eggs for comic/Spidey fans. 7/10

[J Harker]

Originally Posted by trebor8273

Good but not a top tier marvel. Tom Holland is spiderman, Keaton is great as usual even if he is a bit under used. The scenes with ironman/Stark are good and don't overshadow Spiderman. The last post credit scene is funny and a bit annoying. Lots of in jokes and easter eggs for comic/Spidey fans. 7/10

Just got in from it. Bit underwhelmed i must say. Think i was expecting too much.

[trebor8273]

Originally Posted by J Harker

Just got in from it. Bit underwhelmed i must say. Think i was expecting too much.

Same, hence why I only gave it a 7, took a while to get going!

[J Harker]

Originally Posted by trebor8273

Same, hence why I only gave it a 7, took a while to get going!

Thats what i thought. Given it wasn't an origin story as such, it did seem to drag a bit for the first hour or so.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Gettysburg (1993)

A bum numbing 4 hour + plus telling of the battle of Gettysburg. A pivotal point in the American Civil War which was fought July 1-3 1863.

Centering around the generals - Lee (Martin Sheen) and Longstreet (Tom Berenger) for the South and Jeff Daniels Col. Chamberlain for the North. Daniels came across the best as his character featured in the battle rather than just wandering around behind the lines coming up with bloated speeches.The acting is largely excellent, the likes of C Thomas Howell and Kevin Conroy standing out in particular, but the film belongs to Daniels who should have won an Oscar for his sympathetic portrayal of a man at first seemingly out of his depth and then under fire.

Yes there is a lot of talk, but there are also two lengthy battle sequences including a woodland set piece that lasted a good half hour which put the viewer in the thick of the action as Chamberlain (Daniels) attempts to defend Little Round Top from a mass army of Confederates. A battle which was as gripping as any i can recall on screen.

The second lengthy action sequence is the final hour as Lee marches his Confederate army a mile over open ground up to Cemetery Ridge where he feels the lines of the Yankees are weakest. Needless to say, as this happens every time where such a tactic is deployed, there are huge casualties.

I have to admit and say i basically knew nothing about the events of the American Civil War until i watched Gettysburg. Although it does come over like Southern propaganda at times it's a film that filled a lot of gaps in my knowledge of events of the time.

Gettysburg is flawed but i found a quality and passion from the film makers in trying to depict events as true to life as they could. It's also beautifully filmed and features a soaring score from Randy Edelman. For these reasons it was memorable and compulsive viewing.

Footnote - As i began watching this at 9pm last night i only had the intention of watching the first act and continuing with the second half this evening. It's testament to everything about Gettysburg that i watched the whole thing in one sitting.

[Frankie Teardrop]

VENGEANCE OF THE ZOMBIES – I'd forgotten how much fun this Paul Naschy zombie outing is. Set in post-swinging London in 1972, it lays on some tasty faux-psychedelia in the form of fish-eye lens distortions and a barmy soundtrack that bounces from cheesy jazz to radiophonics. There's a giallo-type voodoo murderer bad-guy and some surprisingly creepy living dead. Quite bloody for its time too, especially in the throat-stabbing department. Naschy normally makes me yawn a little, but here the pace only flags a couple of times and a groovy atmosphere predominates.

ONE DARK NIGHT – Frankie fave Meg Tilly wants to get in with the in-crowd, so agrees to spend the night in the local mausoleum as part of some eighties hazing style ritual... unluckily for her, a major league psychic guy with a talent for telekinisis has just been interred there, so peer humiliation is the least of her problems. 'One Dark Night' has quite a lot going for it, for me at least. The atmosphere is pure 1983, there's a weirdly detached feel to it (at first) that gives it a vaguely arty air, and the corpse pile up at the end is pretty entertaining. The problem is, it's just a big tease really. The horror goodness only hits in the last ten or twenty minutes, and the rest is build-up which wouldn't be so bad if the usual teenage hand wringing about identity and pointless relationships was done with some style and sass, like some of the high school stuff from around the time. Somehow I always end up giving this a second chance, though.

DEVIL TIMES FIVE – Some homicidal kids lay waste to a household of boring ass adults in this odd seventies grindhouse outing. I couldn't remember much about 'Devil Times Five' before I put it on the other day, apart from that I'd seen it a couple of times ten years or so ago. It's one of those films which make that peculiarly seventies move of melding a flat TV style look and feel with random bursts of odd aesthetics – e.g, an endless sepia tinted slow motion assault scene – and strange and uncomfortable moments (quite a few, for example the playful seduction / humiliation of a learning disabled guy etc etc). It's not a particularly visceral film, just slightly 'off' in a way which seems interesting because it doesn't readily translate into modern film-making tactics. I appreciate this kind of queasiness, but the thing with 'Devil Times Five' is that it really does get a bit saggy for a crucial twenty minutes in the middle, and there isn't too much atmosphere. Those who like these kind of anomalies will already dig it.

[J Harker]

For the umpteenth time.
I Walked With a Zombie