In the past month I have seen two massive budget science fiction epics from name Hollywood directors.

One was a pretentious barrel of boredom that looked pretty but misfired in every other possible way. The other was exceptionally well made, enormous fun in a glorious old fashioned way and a refreshing joy from start to finish.

The duffer was Prometheus, the joy was John Carter.

Yep, I thought John Carter was a wonderful film. It gave me the same emotional ride as Mike Hodges's 1980 Flash Gordon ie: IT WAS FUN!

Cast were great (I am now in love with Lynn Collins), it looked gorgeous, action scenes were plentiful but never overdone, the greatest integration of CGI and SPFX I have ever seen in a Live Action film, and it did not offend my sensibilities as a big fan of the original series of books.

I loved it. Silly, frivolous enjoyment, the like of which Hollywood seemed to have forgotten how to make in recent years.

I cannot for the life of me work out why it was panned by everyone.

Totally agree. Body Snatchers is far superior to Kaufman's film.

The Invasion isn't up to much at all though.

Gojirosan, I haven't seen John Carter but I'd like to now. Yeah, the Ridley Scott was very disappointing, I thought all those references to the original films were badly misplaced. A month after seeing the film, I remember almost nothing about it...

I also found John carter VASTLY underrated, sure it took a few liberty's here and there with the source material but the end product was a lot of fun. A victim of poor marketing and the modern audiences failiure to appreciate pulp fantasy. I always say Mike Hodges FLASH GORDON got similar poor treatment at the box office and critics.

Took my nieces to see HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA today (we were going to see FRANKENWEENIE but got there too late) and I didn't fancy it but it turned out to be really good.

What films have you seen recently
 

What films have you seen recently

I took my sons to watch Hotel Transylvania today at the brand new Vue Cinema that opened this afternoon. I don't remember the last time I laughed as much during a film, we all absolutely loved it. My only complaint is the fact they called Frankenstein's monster Frankenstein, guess that's just me being fickle. Highly recommended, even if you haven't got kids!

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Cant believe i have left it so long to see this. Some over the top greatness. Also nice to see some faces from Trailer Park Boys in it too.

Just watched Police Story for the first time in about fifteen years. Still a classic of its kind with some breathtaking set pieces.

No wonder no-one in Asia will insure Jackie and his stunt team after this.

The talky inane bit in the middle with the two girls still rambles on for far too long though.

Finally watched The Devil Inside all the way through.

Ouch! What a turkey. I think it might actually be even worse than Paranormal Activity.

last few films viewed....

KILLER JOE
Absolutely loved every single second of this southern Film noir. The film features not 1, not 2 but 5 stand performances most notably Gina Gershon, Juno Temple and Matthew McConoughey in a rare bad guy role. Goes insanely dark in the final 20 minutes and shows that William Friedkin can still make a better film than 90% of people who call themselves 'Directors'. Definite must see.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER
Again an extremely satisfying watch. Full of action and American history. Some great visuals and some good performances. Never knew politics was this interesting. Recommended.

COCKNEY'S VS ZOMBIES
Pretty much does what it says on the tin. Very funny zombie comedy from the writer of Severance. Very gory, proper shufflers and very cockney. Richard Brier's being chased by a horde of the undead is one of the highlights of the year. Recommended.

SUMMER WARS
Anime from the director of The Girl Who Leapt through time. Stunning animation and very well thought out script about a super computer network that runs everything until a rogue A.I infiltrates and starts messing things up. Also a very sweet film. Highly Recommended.

CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF
Pretty atmospheric Hammer Horror from Terrance fisher with some bang on Make up work on Olly Reed for his transformation, has a very sinister tone from the start and for a film made in 1961 contains a fair amount of Gore. Defo worth a purchase...

MARDOCK SCRAMBLE
No faults on the animation at all, but for someone not familiar with the source novel, i had no idea what the **** was going on. At 65 mins long the pacing was a mess and needed to be at least 90-100 mins. Film finished on a cliffhanger so gonna have to watch the second one soon.

THE DEVIL RIDES OUT
Good Hammer horror with a rare good guy Role for Christopher Lee. All Round eerie atmosphere and good performances and good direction from Terrance Fisher as usual. Would like to see what the Blu-ray looks like.

LOOPER
Very well made science fiction thriller with a well written example of time travel that is very easy to follow. Some good performances from Both Willis and Gordon-Levitt but suffers from some familiarity when it comes to plot. All round good film that was more fun and interesting than Prometheus.

RED TAILS
While the film boasts some brilliant CG Dogfights, the rest of the film over uses the format and the dramatic story driven elements fall a little flat, Some of the performances are good but not all. As an action adventure it's fun if a tad overlong. As a portrayal of a moment in history it's a bit of missed opportunity. The film is the feature debut of TV director Anthony Hemingway who cut his teeth directing gritty HBO shows like The Wire, True Blood and Treme but there is no grit or realism to Red Tails, this is probably it's biggest downfall. In the hands of a more experienced director like Spielberg or Scorsese, Red Tails could have been brilliant. It also doesn't help that the screenplay was written by comedy writer and a comic book writer/anime writer, who have near to no grasp on human drama. The biggest and laziest problem for me was the opening titles. The Red Tales Logo it's self was ok only for the following titles to all be done in the Arial black font which just made the film's opening look like some cheap DTV action flick. But aside from the major problems the film suffers from it's still an entertaining boys own adventure. For a better arial based war flick from the last few years, i highly recommend WW1 film FLYBOYS, or the 1995 HBO movies, The Tuskegee Airmen. You could probably give this one a miss.

THE STICK UP
Smartly plotted Crime thriller from Roadhouse director Rowdy Herrington. Good performances all round, James Spader is great in these understated roles. A brilliant crime caper and an undiscovered gem of a film.

CHERNOBYL DIARIES
Rubbish horror film which is not only badly made but also quite distasteful. Avoid.

PIRANHA 3DD
What the **** is this supposed to be? a horror film or a porn movie?. I really enjoyed the first Piranha 3D as Alexandre Aja took the gore and tongue in cheek humour and made a funny little horror flick. This sequel which runs a total of 83mins is 'directed' by John Gulager, a man who made his name of the fairly bad taste horror trilogy Feast, which to be honest, although not in the same league as most modern horror films were still an enjoyable enough trilogy. Her he seems to have developed what can only be described in medical terms as horny middle aged man syndrome because with in the first 10 minutes we get not 1 but 2 butt naked women that the camera just lears at. Now i'm all for a nice naked lady but not in a motion picture where they're portrayed as sex objects, porn is for that, the film is just a piece of trash cinema and not the good type of trash. Avoid this film and watch some real ****ing porn instead.

UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: DAY OF RECKONING
a brilliant sci-fi horror action thriller drama with some blistering fight scenes and a good intelligent script, probably one of the best action films of the year.
Completely takes you away from the usual smash bang wallop of the previous films for an almost surreal journey into hell. Scott Adkins better start getting major roles after this. The sporting goods shop fight is incredible. Some of the fights in this are almost on par with The Raid. Probably one of my favourite films of the year. This is how DTV action movies should be made.

There we go those are films that i have watched over the last 2 weeks or so.

One of the funniest scenes I've ever seen in a Horror film :lol:

Whats distasteful about Chernobyl Diaries Pedro?

I don't know anything about the film.

I think it may have been Suzi that said it was racist

Edit: It was Sharon who said it was offensive and Keirarts said it was xenophobic towards the Russians

Yes, totally. I have not and would not bother to watch it although I looked it up on IMDB when I first heard about it. The premise I find offensive. I did think I might have got it wrong but people that have seen it seem to suggest they found it offensive. I mean even though ghost towns interest me and I can see why they would make an great premise in horror, especially large industrial, concrete looking ones like Pripyat, it's just wrong.

You just know there wouldn't be something similar about well say the Three Mile Island disaster.

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Dont need to say much other than a great film but as we all know Clint dont do bad films :nod:

It strays too much into the sinister europeans and evil russians stereotypes that some american movies fall into when dealing with some place not american. Hostel skirted it by having an icelandic character feature quite centrally, but here in chernobyl diaries the general assumption is that the russians are pretty much either crooked or incompetent.

That said I didn't find chernobyl diaries terrible, it looks fantastic on blu-ray and the last 30 minutes are good solid horror territory, but there are no diaries and I found myself wanting to watch STALKER (the russian one!) instead.


My advice, don't pay too much for it but give it a try.

Aren't all Europeans sinister and Evil? I thought that was common knowledge?

Yeah we are!!!

lol!

It's things like the tour guide supposedly being ex special forces but behaving incompetently, the american living abroad bragging about how easy the local girls are then when they encounter some local men their practically thuggish inbred potential rapists... and thats just the stuff at the start, if the film had been better written, they could have had the americans landing themselves in the trouble simply because of the cultural divide.

I didn't find the fact they shot in the actual location that troubling, Stalker is a whole mythology created around the place, theres the novel, a tarkovsky film a bunch of russian made games and the russians even hold LARP games of stalker at the site, for me it was all the crude depiction of the europeans compared to the americans.

Incidentally, does anyone know if criterion are planning to issue a tarkovsky box set? I have heard bad things about the uk set from artificial eye and i'm not interested enough to see them again that i'd fork out the asking prices on the seperate releases of Solaris and stalker.

Yep, this is what I found to be vulgar and reprehensible about it. Add to this that the lead characters who we are supposed to care about are a bunch of horrible people and you get the impression that the film is just generally misanthropic, but we should naturally be supportive of the non-Ukrainians no matter how awful they might be as people (and they are just dreadful).

Then there's the question of taste in writing a script using a real nuclear disaster as a playground for a shitty low budget film, and for the characters within to use as a tourist sight-seeing resort. I wasn't entirely comfortable with the tone of how this was done. It wasn't an anti-nuclear statement like Godzilla or anything it was just nasty and heartless.

I found it quite objectionable. Plus it's a plain bad film as well. Worthless.

:eek: For me it was the exact opposite!!

Aren't all Australians blood thirsty yobbo's? :dance:

Nothing to do with me - I've not seen the film!

Not sure dude. Criterion have just three Tarkovsky films - Ivan's Childhood, Andrei Rublev and Solaris, so a box set would be limited to that I suspect. I'm hoping they might be able to put out a Blu of the so called Scorsese-cut of Andrei Rublev, but I heard the print may not be good enough to make a HD presentation of. I have the Russian Blu of the shorter International Cut and it's really a beauty...

And me. I hated John Carter (of Mars) and though Prometheus was really good, but have the BD to watch which will see if my opinion of it at the cinema changes at all.
I thought there were two types of Australians: those who are relaxed and like beer, barbecues and surfing, with the rest as (possibly inbred) homicidal maniacs who leer at women and take great joy in terrorising tourists.

Type 2 are the Tasmanians. We all make inbred jokes about them :pound:

Recent viewings,1-14) from the two fine Claude Chabrol box-sets released by Arrow,15)the magnificent,touching 9-hour documentary about the holocaust,16)Brazilian film made in 1981 about the life of child criminals
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Tower Heist

This thread would be infinitely more interesting of people added a short comment/review to say what they thought about the films they watched.

You can ask them

Someone once said "if you have nothing good to say say nothing"

Perhaps why we didn't get an opinion of tower heist. :lol:

For me I'm just useless at reviewing stuff. I can't even explain the stuff I like, I'm usually better when I hate something. I think we just need pretty pictures.

Rasputin-the Mad Monk, shot back to back with Dracula-Prince of Darkness and utilising many of the same sets and actors, this gem from Hammer tells the tale of Grigori Rasputin, a long haired, bearded, drunken, crazy Russian who claimed to have healing hands!
Fine performances from Sir Christopher Lee, Francis Matthews and the delightful Barbara Shelley with direction from Don Sharp bringing to life a script by Tony Hinds. The film contains an amusing scene of Lee dancing whilst drunk, rather like I will be later on tonight ahem...and although not entirely historically accurate, it's still a fine film for fans of the studio.
The Blu Ray from Studio Canal is under scrutiny at the minute from people complaining about the "thinness" of the audio, particularly during the opening theme music, as I posted in the official thread for this, the audio does seem to have no real low end, but a quick adjustment to my surround sound set up, literally taking seconds, meant it sounded fine to me. As for the PQ, I really can't say a bad word about it, it looks fantastic!
Special features include an informative making of, commentary track, a cool feature on Hammer book adaptions, a stills gallery and the ever present Oliver Reed narrated World of Hammer episode, this time a rather boring look at the few Pirate/Swashbuckling/Robin Hood pictures that Hammer produced (and that I wasn't aware of until half an hour ago), for me that is the only bad thing I can say about this set, highly recommended.

Why not just add a comment automatically? Lists are boring. Unless it's a bunch of purchases or something..

I was talking about this case ;)

Yeah, I agree. It's always good to see what people have to say about stuff and there's been many a film I've picked up on the basis on peoples comments in this very thread. Even just a line or two makes a big difference

Unless there are comments the posts are pretty pointless.

Rasputin the Mad Monk is one of the few Hammer films (along with Straight on 'Till Morning) that really disappointed me.

So my recent post is pointless.