What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[bleakshaun]

Originally Posted by Demoncrat

Oooh that's cut as well. You can borrow my Japan Shock 1 anytime

It's nae cut. Postcards as well .... lovely looking package

Thanks, but I don't think I could hack the uncut version

Sent from my PRA-LX1 using Tapatalk

[Demoncrat]

Originally Posted by Frankie Teardrop

THE BABY – This used to be on TV all the time when I was a kid. I remember always feeling a bit apprehensive about watching it, because it really used to creep me out. Still does, pretty much. ‘The Baby’ tells of a social worker who is concerned about this guy who’s essentially been kidnapped by his own family and forced to live as an infant. He’s an adult, but his identity has been diaper based for the last twenty odd years. Getting him away from the vicious harridans who surround him would be a good idea, but does our seemingly well-meaning county official have even more awful designs of her own? One of those seventies flicks that seems poised between TV movie and psychedelic grime-fest. It’s not very explicit, but the concept itself is unsettling. I like how ‘baby’s voice is (badly) post-dubbed… although this seems a bit muted on the Severin Blu ray I watched. Maybe my imagination, films like this certainly take on an afterglow when you see them at an impressionable age. Still a bleak, bleak sickie after all these years, and very much recommended.

THE MIGHTY PEKING MAN – Shaw Bros rip-off of the mid seventies Kong revival. I’d watch this over the 1976 King Kong remake any day. It’s just a riot from start to finish. I mean, where do you start? Every second scene sees a bad miniature being trashed by a man in a gorilla mask, or finds room for a shitly done back projection. The latter is an endearing device employed a bit too often by TMPM, starkly revealed in all its ill thought-through cheapness by the wonders of HD. I think the hook for me is the hysterical tone… it’s there throughout, even during the less busy ‘jungle’ scenes, but bursts into life when we reach civilisation. TMPM may have lead characters and so forth, but equal weight is given to anonymous crowds running and screaming in the shadow of the towering monster. Who, of course, is never very far from being just a dude in a monkey costume on a badly designed set. One thing that gives me a bit of faith in ploughing through all this stuff is, it’s strange, you can make an objectively shit movie but in some unfathomable way it’s genuinely amazing.

TROLL 2 – Speaking of which, ‘Troll 2’ is considered the holy grail of bad movies by a lot of people, but it’s fair to say it’s actually nowhere near the true bottom of the barrel. It ends up with the ‘lovably awful’ tag slapped on it by those who can’t be bothered to work out why it’s so special. I could accuse myself of the same, because ‘Troll 2’ is pretty special, but I can’t figure it out. It is a very weird film, actually. I was trying to explain its attractions to a friend the other day, and I really found myself floundering… “OK, it’s like a fairy tale, deliberately like a fairy tale, only they get it wrong because then they try to make it seem like they’re making a comedy, but really you’re not sure what the intentions are so maybe it’s not deliberately anything, because… well, it’s directed by Claudio Fragasso so etc etc…” Personally, I just let it wash over me in a haze of kids pissing on the dinner table, awful troll masks, back room sermons where meat is reviled and ridiculous popcorn based sex scenes. There’s the perfect balance of possible knowingness and really obvious dumbness about it to make it always a mystery somehow.

BODY PUZZLE – A late sort-of giallo by Lamberto Bava. It’s about a killer who’s trying to retain the memory of his dead lover by murdering organ recipients for their body parts; a cop gets romantically involved with a woman at the centre of the mystery. ‘Body Puzzle’ feels pretty slickly done. Despite the corny characterisations and bad lines, it has more in common with early nineties American thrillers than late Italo horror, aesthetically anyway. There are some bizarro touches that mark it out as being in more gonzo territory, however – the killer always murdering to classical music, the weirdness of the central concept (which the film doesn’t really live up to), the progressively idiotic twists, set-pieces like the teacher being murdered in front of a classroom of kids who sit around laughing… it all adds up to propel ‘Body Puzzle’ away from the police procedural it sometimes threatens to resemble. In the end, enjoyable nineties schlock.

As always ....

[Deadite]

Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs

Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)

Marvel go down the teen movie route but forget to add any smut, rock n' roll, thrills or plot. Tom Holland insipidly squeaks along reminding us how much better Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield actually were in the role. The only points of interest came with cameos from Robert Downey Jr and Jon Favreau. I can't even remember the girl who played Mary Sue - she was that good! Poor old Michael Keaton as villain Vulture and Marisa Tomei as Spidey's aunt were far too good for this waste of time.

Interesting. Not seen it yet, but the shizbut was that this film was the closest in tone to comic spiderman. Not always a good thing it seems.

Conversely, the last Thor film is about as far from comic Thor as it can get yet lots of people love it.

[trebor8273]

Originally Posted by Deadite

Interesting. Not seen it yet, but the shizbut was that this film was the closest in tone to comic spiderman. Not always a good thing it seems.

Conversely, the last Thor film is about as far from comic Thor as it can get yet lots of people love it.

For me home coming was the best Spider-Man and Tom Holland Is by far the best Peter Parker/Spider-Man perfectly capturing the character from the comic's innocents and energy.

[Demoncrat]

Still haven't seen this particular webslinger yet ... but liked him in Civil War so looking forward to this ... the Garfield film I watched was WAY too dour for me. He does seem more like the character I read as a minicrat

[Justin101]

I quite ‘liked’ the new Spider-Man but it’s one of the worst films in the current MCU, I think at least. It’s too long and there are too many horny teen jokes which fall flat. Good villain though and I thought Holland was a likeable Spidey, just his best mate was tedious and again, too many jokes and quips that aren’t funny. Kinda like Freddy cracking jokes in NOES pt 6 lol...

[Dave Boy]

Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs

Marvel go down the teen movie route but forget to add any smut, rock n' roll, thrills or plot. Tom Holland insipidly squeaks along reminding us how much better Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield actually were in the role. The only points of interest came with cameos from Robert Downey Jr and Jon Favreau. I can't even remember the girl who played Mary Sue - she was that good! Poor old Michael Keaton as villain Vulture and Marisa Tomei as Spidey's aunt were far too good for this waste of time.

For me, the best Spider-Man is Tobey Maguire and his first two movies were the best. The first film is still the best one overall.
Those for me is the Spider-Man of the comics.

The thing that spoilt Homecoming for me is the costume. Since when did Spidey have a high tech suit like that? His costume now talks to him for ***** sake.
The Peter Parker in Homecoming may be like the Peter from the comics but Spider-Man is most defiantly not.
Spider-Man's costume is a basic home made costume and not an Iron Man suit which it appears to be in Homecoming.

[Nosferatu@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Deadite

Interesting. Not seen it yet, but the shizbut was that this film was the closest in tone to comic spiderman. Not always a good thing it seems.

Conversely, the last Thor film is about as far from comic Thor as it can get yet lots of people love it.

I've never read a Marvel comic book, so I've no idea about how faithful the MCU films are to the source material. I really enjoyed Spider-Man: Homecoming, both the cinema and at home, but I'd recently watched the films that preceded it so watched it as part of the great hall rather than a stand-alone movie.

Judging it on its own merits, it's probably weaker than the first two Sam Raimi films, though I feel it has the best Peter Parker/Spider-Man, and loved the interaction with Happy and Tony Stark. As a film which is a continuation of events from Avengers: Age of Ultron, Ant-Man and, Captain America: Civil War, I thought it was excellent.

[Nosferatu@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs

Gaslight (1940)

Originally Posted by Deadite

I wonder if its the only play/film to have a verb named after it.

Originally Posted by Nosferatu@Cult Labs

Interesting thought. I can't think of any at the moment.

I've been thinking about this on and off through the day and the only other film I can think of is the American documentary Catfish (2010), a fascinating and disturbing watch.

[Demoncrat]

Small Town Crime (2017)

This I recommend. A boozer ex cop enters a world of hurt when he pulls a good samaritan act after a night out ... decent supporting cast bolster this tale.