What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[Nosferatu@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs

What did you think of the remake, Mr.B?

I thought it was better than the original.

I also thought Franck Khalfoun's Maniac remake was superior to William Lustig's. It is more unsettling and uncomfortable to watch, and Elijah Wood really surprised me with his intense central performance.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Wolfen (1981)

An intriguing, thoughtful, ever so slightly classy, occasionally gory, yet not remotely scary horror film about an intelligent breed of mutant killer wolves with special tracking abilities running wild in New York city as cop Albert Finney investigates.

One of those films that has an eco message, correlating the plight of the native American Indian to the wolves violent acts, although it's not particularly heavy handed. The film boasts excellent optical effects with subjective camera work denoting the wolves point of view as they go hunting human prey among the run down buildings and most notably, bridges across the city and it comes across as very refreshing, rather innovative and most of all extremely memorable as well as being damned sexy looking in HD.

One of the great 80's horror films.

[MrBarlow]

Cross Of The Devil. 1975.

A novelist travels to Spain to visit his sister and finds out she had been murdered by a gang of devil worshipers.

British born Director John Gilling of The Reptile, Plague Of Zombies and The Mummy's Shroud made tis his last film and able to capture some nice Spanish Gothic element in this film. This seemed to have a very slow start but as it goes on the film does get better and more intriguing, even if it does have a low budget look, the acting from everyone involved was top notch with a bit of twist and last 30 minutes or so was nicely executed.

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[Demdike@Cult Labs]

The Monuments Men (2014)

Not your typical war film!

This true story is a quiet, understated tale about a small task force of soldiers who have to try and save Europe's art treasures before the Nazi's steal or destroy them all.

Despite the fact there is practically no action whatsoever, which is fairly radical for a film set in the last months of WW2, it's still an interesting and attention grabbing piece which is nicely acted to the point of underplaying by it's top notch cast of George Clooney, Matt Damon, Bill Murray, John Goodman, Cate Blanchett, Jean Dujardin, Hugh Bonneville and the excellent Bob Balaban.

I always enjoy it and would recommend it to those who want something a little different in their war time set thrillers. I was delighted to pick it up on Blu from Poundland a while back.

[Demoncrat]

Hawkeye (1988, Leo Fong)

A film set in Las Vegas that isn't by the Breen?
Buddy caper, when two mismatched plods are jammed together and are saddled with a no hope case. No sleeping at the back!!
This leads to murky mayhem (bad print, night shoots galore ETC) and then some. The mayor's on their ass and they better get results
Ahem. At least with Samurai Cop you can see what's happening.
It has it all, boom in shot, stilted dialogue (when you can hear it). Sigh.

[MrBarlow]

The Reincarnation Of Isabel. 1973.

In 1300 Isabella is tortured and burned for being a witch, several hundred years later a small group of people arrive at a castle unbeknownst to them in the cellar is Isabella's remains and her servants who want her brought back with sacrificing a certain member of the party.

This was a strange film, it has all the hallmarks to the Eurosleaze stuff from nudity, girl on girl action, it doesn't seem to be well written or directed, it does have the dark Gothic toned castle, yet for some reason I found this entertaining.

Even at the start of the film there is a nice setting of a naked woman with a gaping hole in her chest, a cloaked figure getting ready to offer a sacrifice on a well created set piece, who ever designed the set did do a decent job and shown with some good cinematography and a great eerie background score, at times the plot seems to go off rails and back on again. Think this is one of those films to watch every so often.

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[Demoncrat]

The Unexpected Bar Mitvah (2014, Chip Rosetti)

I'll watch most things. Whether I like them or not at the end is a crap shoot.
This being one of the Xtian flicks I picked up due to not being able to sell them in the shop. This one though. A Jewish family move to the Bible Belt for the father's new job. Their son then starts to have dreams about the Jesus.
Oy vey already. Told flatly and matter of factly this heartwarming tale rivals Triumph Of The Will for even handedness
They also put the boot into Harry Potter for good measure
For me, the real message of this film is how fairytales are used to divide us, not bring us together.

Next!!!

[MrBarlow]

Contaminated man. 2000.

In 1986 David Whitman came home and contaminated his wife and daughter, years later in Budapest Joseph Muller is a carrier for a deadly disease. David leads a Hazmat team and search for Joseph believing he is innocent. A team of Counter Terrorists believe Joseph is intentionally killing people.

William Hurt stars as David, troubled by his past involving his family and left to clean up everyone's else's mistakes and mess while trying to keep people around him safe. Peter Weller stars as a disgruntled employee who is exposed to some toxin that kills people in under a hour or so. Natascha McElhone plays the person sent into investigate what happened at the plant and who was exposed and to what. With films like these there is always a prick and in this it's Michael Brandon who everyone just seems to want his face punched and plays a decent part as the government agent.

Some parts of this, I don't know if it was last minute changes or the writers trying to be creative but it's like the disease was changing and rapidly killing people quicker as the film went on. Anthony Hickox did try and make it decent but seemed to last longer than need be, second time I have seen this and a bit better this time round but not by much.

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[MrBarlow]

A Serbian Film. 2010

I think we all know the plot to this but to recap, Milo a out of work porn star agrees to be in a "art movie" but finds out he is appearing in a snuff movie.

I saw this film a few years back and was edited down and felt totally wrong watching it, I got no idea what possessed me to download it and watch it again in it's full uncut glory, think i uttered the words "Sick F@:K" a lot that I lost count and "It's Only A Movie". I know some of us like extreme violence but this does go beyond extreme, yeah we want the bad guys to suffer and karma does follow but this film puts the term "Skull F@:K" to it's use.

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[SymbioticFunction]

Watched the UK blu-ray of Happy Birthday To Me. Despite the weirdly long running time, my wife and I were quite enjoying ourselves until it got to the Scooby Doo revelation at the end. Absolute film killer moment. Am going to my local Cex tomorrow to swap it for a bd copy of Joe Dante's Matinee (which we also haven't seen before). btw I feel the same 'film killer' way about the twist ending on Switchblade Romance.