What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[Demoncrat]

The sheer variety of cinema in the 70s made here is still something I am coming to grips with. From Rentadick to Remember Me This Way there are treasures and terrors aplenty.

I digress.

Prisoners Of The Lost Universe (1983, Terry Marcel)
The next time a science chap invites you to gaze upon his brand new combine matter transporter....two steps back methinks. A kendo champeen & a roving reporter get to see what's at the end of the rainbow .... feudal shenanigans with John Saxon. Won't eat human offal onscreen but ok about beating women . Not quite the film I had imagined. Fun in parts for sure but on the whole Star Odyssey the more enjoyable of the pair. In fact I'm off to watch it again

[gag]

Wasnt 100% sure where to put this.

Its a article about how cinema been more of a nah than yes this year ,

https://www.theguardian.com/film/201...lerian-get-out
Box office massacre: how Hollywood flopped this summer

Bit I'm not sure the article 100% correct because says how despicable me 3 been a flop, other day saw on news its been one of the biggest franchise ever ..

[bleakshaun]

Originally Posted by gag

Wasnt 100% sure where to put this.

Its a article about how cinema been more of a nah than yes this year ,

https://www.theguardian.com/film/201...lerian-get-out
Box office massacre: how Hollywood flopped this summer

Bit I'm not sure the article 100% correct because says how despicable me 3 been a flop, other day saw on news its been one of the biggest franchise ever ..

It might be comparable to the other 2 films

Sent from my MediaPad T1 8.0 Pro using Tapatalk

[Susan Foreman]

Originally Posted by gag

Wasnt 100% sure where to put this.

Its a article about how cinema been more of a nah than yes this year ,

https://www.theguardian.com/film/201...lerian-get-out
Box office massacre: how Hollywood flopped this summer

Bit I'm not sure the article 100% correct because says how despicable me 3 been a flop, other day saw on news its been one of the biggest franchise ever ..

It's all relative and 'hidden expenses'

Hollywood accounting: Hollywood Accounting: How A $19 Million Movie Makes $150 Million... And Still Isn't Profitable

Priceonomics: Why Do All Hollywood Movies Lose Money?

[Frankie Teardrop]

THE LIVING DEAD GIRL – It's been a while since I watched any Jean Rollin. Finding myself again in the realms of 'The Living Dead Girl' was like waking, only to find that I was still in some weirdly pungent dream. TLDG is probably one of his lesser numbers in some ways, but it still swirls with that heady, gauzy atmosphere that settles like an impenetrable fog on the most barren of plotlines. This is about a dead girl who is accidentally reanimated by that great seventies / eighties stock-in-trade, a chemical leak, thence becomes the Living Dead Girl. Being a Jean Rollin film, when she was alive she had an obsessive friendship with another girl, who runs to her rescue after her return from the grave. The living dead girl needs a steady supply of victims to sustain her unhealthy half-life, so girlfriend becomes procurer of flesh and blood. The horror of the living dead girl's condition gives rise to much heartfelt philosophical hand wringing between scenes of nudity/shagging, American tourism in rural France, and blood letting, and TLDG is probably Rollin's goriest movie, or one of them – perhaps by this point he was feeling the need to compete in a genre which was going through a very commercial renaissance of gore. However, the whole thing is so screamingly Rollin, with its morbid eroticism and anguished poetics, that it couldn't be further removed from the latest slasher clone of the day. Although, beneath the look and feel of a Rollin film, you can sense the texture of someone's caravan holiday on the outskirts of Toulouse in 1982, so it is still very much of its time in other ways, which I don't despise. Recommended, and also quite an accessible starting point for Rollin.

KNUCKLEBONES – Checked this out on the basis of Dem's review – I liked it. It's the sort of movie I always hope to stumble upon but for some reason, these days, these kind of titles seem to pass me by a bit. It's in essence an eighties throwback, with some young American adults being menaced by a slasher in an abandoned factory. This time, the bad dude doing the killing is some kind of National Socialist demon, as signposted the slightly odd backstory about nazi garment depots in Texas. 'Knucklebones' doesn't exactly keep a straight face, but it's not played for laughs particularly, either. The demon throws in a few Freddy-ish wisecracks, but there's also some grim gore e.g some guy being chainsawed up the arse. Also, I always appreciate a movie which introduces characters for the sole purpose of having them graphically killed within five minutes of them hitting the screen. Stylistically, 'Knucklebones' looks pretty nice considering its presumably shoestring origins, and manages to make good on its eighties aspirations by being generous with prosthetics and its rubber faced monster. Worth a watch for sure.

THE WINDMILL MASSACRE – A minibus full of tourists with shady pasts breaks down near a windmill in the countryside around Amsterdam. A demonic figure enters the proceedings as past sins are revisited. 'The Windmill Massacre' certainly has its plus points. I really liked some of the ideas – the whole tourist / minibus thing, the Amsterdam setting, this business with windmills – definitely not enough of those in contemporary horror. Also, that guy from Hollyoaks doesn't get enough genre roles, so this should be a pivotal moment for his CV. Stylistically, TWM struck me as being a bit strange. It reminded me of nineties horror – I don't know why, maybe there was something about the way it seemed both slick and flat at the same time, with a kind of obviously telegraphed approach to the material. Either way, despite some good moments of gore and the atmospherics following from the set up, there was a real sense of it flagging at points, with too much standing around and / or action without intrigue. A bit more momentum and some better sustained tension would've raised it a level. Still, worth having a look.

[Nosferatu@Cult Labs]

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (Luc Besson, 2017)

Based on the French, book series Valérian and Laureline, this has the 'honour' of being completely independently funded through crowdsourcing and independently financed by Besson and his wife enough to give a production budget between $177–210 million, making it (according to Wikipedia) the most expensive European and independent film ever made.

It begins very cleverly with a crackly vinyl version of David Bowie's Space Oddity playing over 4:3 footage of the international space station beginning in 1975. This leads into a montage of the ISS expanding and crews from different countries, then different planets greeting one another on the ever expanding orbital research station. Eventually, the structure is too big and, renamed Alpha, is sent on a Magellan voyage into space. From there, the action shifts to the planet Mül, where the inhabitants live an idyllic existence in harmony with nature on white sands and with turquoise waters. This blissful life is interrupted, and then ended, when wreckage from a nearby board crashes into their orbit and a nuclear blast destroys the planet.

Somehow, this event has been transported across time and space in the form of a dream to Valerian, a major in a special police division which is tasked with preserving peace throughout the universe. After a mission where he and his partner Laureline, a woman he has asked to marry him but who isn't interested because of his long 'playlist' of sexual conquests, they learn that Alpha, now the titular City of a Thousand Planets, is threatened by a radioactive dead zone at its centre which is spreading.

The film is blessed with some stunning state-of-the-art visual effects and camera movements which go right back to The Fifth Element, which fully immerse you in the various environments and create the illusion of movement by making great use of the 2.35 widescreen frame. Sadly, Dane DeHaan is not a leading man and is from the 'sweeping brush in clothes' school of acting, plus he and Cara Delevingne have even less chemistry than Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley did in the last Pirates of the Caribbean film I saw (possibly the third one). The writing is also very clumsy and although it would be hypocritical to criticise Luc Besson's English because there is no way I could write a full screenplay in French, the line "evacuate the Commander" should really have been picked up by someone and reworded so Valerian was ordering people to escort him safely from the room, not empty his bowels. When most of the cast is comprised of people for whom English is their first language, it beggars belief that no one noticed this unfortunate grammatical mistake.

I hadn't heard about this scene beforehand, but the most memorable part of the film for me was Rhianna performing (with the help of a body double) a shape shifting pole dance, which is probably the only thing worth revisiting.

There are a range of characters, particularly the three-part Doghan-Dagui information dealer, possibly from the comic books, possibly not, but written in such a way that their interactions with the humans left rethinking Luc Besson was trying less to make an adaptation of the current books and more of something which would appeal to Guardians of the Galaxy fans. Unfortunately, this has none of the fun, sense of adventure or fully developed characters.

So, on one hand, this is a wonderful technical achievement, but on the other it is a sub-Avatar exercise in ham-fisted writing and cringe inducing acting. If you are at all interested in the film, go and see it in the cinema because much of what it has to offer will be completely lost when you watch it at home. If you want a futuristic detective movie, wait until Blade Runner 2049 (which coincidentally also stars Rutger Hauer) is released.

[Nosferatu@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Frankie Teardrop

THE WINDMILL MASSACRE

Not being a Hollyoaks fan (or in any way acquainted with the show), I didn't pick up the point in the casting, but largely agree with your sentiments. I guessed – correctly as it turned out – what was going on about halfway through the film and enjoyed it because I liked what was happening and the plot mechanisms being used. Whether I would have liked it as much if I hadn't figured out as much as I had until the last 10 minutes or so is something I'll never know, but it is a film I thought was based on a solid premise, well executed, and something I'll definitely revisit.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Frankie Teardrop

.

KNUCKLEBONES – Checked this out on the basis of Dem's review – I liked it. It's the sort of movie I always hope to stumble upon but for some reason, these days, these kind of titles seem to pass me by a bit. It's in essence an eighties throwback, with some young American adults being menaced by a slasher in an abandoned factory. This time, the bad dude doing the killing is some kind of National Socialist demon, as signposted the slightly odd backstory about nazi garment depots in Texas. 'Knucklebones' doesn't exactly keep a straight face, but it's not played for laughs particularly, either. The demon throws in a few Freddy-ish wisecracks, but there's also some grim gore e.g some guy being chainsawed up the arse. Also, I always appreciate a movie which introduces characters for the sole purpose of having them graphically killed within five minutes of them hitting the screen. Stylistically, 'Knucklebones' looks pretty nice considering its presumably shoestring origins, and manages to make good on its eighties aspirations by being generous with prosthetics and its rubber faced monster. Worth a watch for sure.

Glad you enjoyed this Frankie. I kind of thought you might as i was watching it.

[Demoncrat]

Sterling as always F!!

Still nae Rollin on BD yet.
Must rectify this post haste methinks.

[Cinematic Shocks]

Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

**** out of *****

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017)

**** out of *****