The Counterfeiters (2007)

10/10.

INSIDE - I was trying to move around some towering piles of DVDs the other day when a copy of 'Inside' fell from atop one tottering mound and hit me on the head. Did I take it as a sign that I should really stop all this crazed disc buying, which devours space as well as cash (and time, if I go as far as watching all this stuff)? No, I took it to mean that I needed to sit down again with 'Inside', which I hadn't seen for years. The cosmos spoke, and I pressed play etc. Well, 'Inside', I'd forgotten how graphic it was. For some reason, I think of the mid-noughties as the time when horror got really gory again, although historically that's more than likely to be bollocks. But there certainly was quite a lot of nasty French stuff being released then, and 'Inside' was part of that very splattery wave. Most will probably be familiar with 'Inside', but for those in need of a recap it's basically about a pregnant photographer, about to give birth (on Xmas eve), who finds herself stalked and eventually terrorised by a shadowy figure. Some quite intense carnage happens along the way. It's great, better than I remembered it, actually... Beatrice Dalle in particular is a really strong, intimidating presence, and, besides the closed location and the oppressive visual style, is at the root of 'Inside's claustrophobic atmosphere. Some of the images towards the end are amazing, including Dalle, her face hideously mangled and burned, cradling a foetus in the dark. The film drew a lot of comparisons to Fulci era Italian stuff, and these kind of visuals rather than necessarily the gore make me think of that brand of crepuscular junk-surrealism. Very much recommended if you haven't seen it already, definitely a high point of last decade's horror cinema.

I really tried to like "Inside" but the scenes with the police and the Arab bloke spoilt the whole thing for me. I just couldn't figure out the reason for them other than making some vague political point totally outside of the context of the rest of the film. Perhaps that was the point.

I agree about Inside being one of the strongest of the 'New French Extremity' films, along with another superb home invasion film, Them (Ils, 2006) and Martyrs (2008). The only part I didn't particularly like were the slightly unconvincing CGI inserts of the foetus.

Superbly acted drama based on a less well known aspect of the Holocaust, which raises some very interesting moral questions, such as how far we as individuals will go to survive in such extreme situations.

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WEIRD SCIENCE (1985)

After watching Frankenstein on the tv,two friends who are hopeless with the girls and can only dream about what it must be like to have a girlfriend, decide to make a woman on their computer....
I had not seen this film in years so it was good to revisit. Lots of fun to be had here as Lisa (Kelly Le Brock) sets out to get the boys on the right track by having a house party that is gate crashed by refugees from The Hills Have Eyes and Mad Max ! Chet (Bill Paxton) is excellent as the big brother bully.

"It's purely sexual" :nod:

I tend to let stuff like that wash over me, and really only tuned into 'Inside' on a visceral / atmospheric / waking dream type level. That said, it was obvious that a broad point was being made about social unrest vs bourgeois suburbia. The makers of 'Inside' chose to keep this in the background and use it more as a source of vague threat, which is probably for the best, because a lot of the other aspects of the film do come across as being a bit contrived (ie setting up the various callers at the house to ensure a stock of 'victims').

Agree on the CGI in 'Inside' for sure, although it was easy to let it slide. I really liked most of those French nouveau splatter films, but 'Martyrs' was for me the strongest of them. And 'Them' / 'Ils' was great too, and did what it did without recourse to loads of gore and extremity. I have a soft spot for 'Frontiers' and 'Haute Tension', which sometimes seem a little disregarded these days.

Have you seen the French film Brocéliande ?

It's not up to the same standard as the others mentioned here, but it's mix of splatter, beasts and Celtic lore appeal to me.

Unfortunately the US dvd is long since deleted but i'd recommend a watch if it pops up on Netflix etc.

Watched a load of stuff (as ever) but a particular highlight was Coherence which I watched last night. A low-budget sci-fi thriller/relationship drama that's both smart and engrossing and demands immediate re-watching due to the twistiness of the narrative. Highly recommended

Coherence is one of the more interesting sounding titles from 2014 which I've been wanting to check out.

I agree that Haute Tension has generally fallen out of favour, perhaps due to the implausibility of the ending, but I really like it and find its good points easily outweighed the negatives. Frontiers definitely has a serious point to make, and makes it quite well, whilst being extremely nasty into the bargain!

I haven't seen that one, but will keep an eye out for it, so thanks for the recommendation.

When i first watched Haute Tension i couldn't believe how it ripped off Dean Koontz' novel Intensity from eight years earlier.

Intensity really stuck in my head because it was the first Koontz book i read and it really gripped me.

Aja has since said he did plagiarize the book but Koontz didn't take legal action as he thought the film was shit and didn't want to be associated in any way with the film.

He has a point because the book is far better than the film, which is very good. I'm sure anyone who's read it will agree with me.

Martyrs is for me by far the best of the little bubble of French extremes that appeared a few years ago. Just about everything about it fitted into one or more aspects of my personal aesthetics of the time. I also really liked Them and Frontiers. Haute Tension didn't really grab me at the time but if I still have it I may give it a spin soon.

I'm not sure why, but I wasn't aware of that situation, nor the book, which I'll add to my Amazon wish list and, when I have some time in the summer, buy and read.

I heartily agree!

I'm not a massive fan of Inside (also mainly due to the reasons you listed earlier on MTDS). I thought Haute Tension and Ils were great though, but couldn't stand Frontiers.

Calvaire (The Ordeal) is also worth a watch and in a similar vein for those who haven't seen it; albeit Belgian and not French ;)

I second the recommendation of Calvaire, which I thought was terrific and the English title/translation of The Ordeal was extremely fitting – I call films like that (other examples could be The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Wolf Creek) 'ordeal horrors' as they put the audience through the wringer, just as they do with the characters.

I'm not sure why but i was bored by The Ordeal.

A bit of an ordeal was it? ;)

:makelikeatree:

Oops.

Scratch that.

I've never seen it.

I think i was thinking of Dead End - a none French film with a slightly similar cover. Well it's red anyway. :lol:

I've never seen Dead End and after your glowing appraisal I doubt I'll bother!

It was full of people bickering loudly in a car. :rolleyes:

Sounds a lot like my old family vacations. Something I wouldn't really want to watch a film about... although a true horror story it may be. :nod:

Queen Of Blood (Curtis Harrington, 1970)
Woooh mama, watched this last night. Will be watching it again tonight and aw.....;)

A proper review will follow then...:)

Arrow's Blu-ray edition of Mark of the Devil -- a great restoration of a great film IMO. I really enjoyed the doco on the disc concerning the new wave of British horror films in the 60s and 70s too. While I enjoy Mark of the Devil it still doesn't hold a candle to Witchfinder General, and I'm sure Michael Armstrong would agree with that after all the interference in his film.

How long exactly, is the doc.

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THX 1138 (1971)

Living in a futuristic society where emotions are forbidden and robot police keep the order, THX 1138 attempts to escape the city.......

Feature film debut of George Lucas. Reworking his student film Electronic Labyrinth: THX-1138 4EB, Lucas offers a bleak future society.
Unfortunately, Lucas returned to the film in 2004. Uncle George saw fit to add and alter several scenes in his CGI madness and this so called 'Directors Cut' is now the only available version on dvd and blu ray.

I only saw this for the first time a couple of years back.

I enjoyed it. Possibly because i'd never seen the original cut, Lucas's tinkering wasn't an issue for me.

Messiah of evil.

Structurally playing like a H.P Lovecraft tale, narrated from an Asylum by someone who may or may not be insane, Messiah tells the tale of a young woman named Arletty who heads to a west coast Californian town named Point Dunne to find her missing father (played by the legend Royal Dano) Something weird is going on in the town, people are turning into something and the place feels eerily deserted.
One of Messiah of evils strengths is it refuses to explain too much of what's going on. The whole atmosphere to the film is strange and oppressive with outlandish set design and a weird suspiria-esque colour pallet to the film. It has several scenes that stand out as genuinely creepy including a night time visit to a supermarket that would make the nutters that wander around my 24 hour tesco seem normal and a cinema scene that is genuinely terrifying.
It's aggravating that the new blu-ray is such good quality, Given Bill Olsens attitude to his customers it would be nice to lay into this release. However its bloody amazing and surpasses the already great DVD. MOE is a one of a kind, a genuinely great little movie that lingers in the memory and feels like a nightmare that's come to life.

Candle for the devil

Judy Geeson plays a young English woman who heads to sunny Spain to spend some time with her sister. Little does she realise that her sisters been done in by the pair of ultra-catholic moralists who run the pension she's staying at. Candle is a fantastic, tense horror that like a lot of Spanish horror of the period deals with the hangover of only recently emerging from the ultra conservative Franco regime. The two sisters logic for their increasingly brutal killings is coldly plausible, and the ending is left to a certain amount of audience interpretation. Apparently this is getting a blu-ray, shall definitely be upgrading this one.

Exorcist 3.

Very, very underrated. Sadly butchered by Morgan's creek who had form for this sort of cultural vandalism its fortunate that in spite of its flawed status, Exorcist 3 still works as a fantastic continuation of the Exorcist and manages to exorcise (sorry!) the memory's of part 2. The blu-ray looks fantastic, really very good indeed. The film has some really intense and creepy sequences that continue William peter blatty's meditations on the nature and reason for evils presence in the world.

According to our player, it runs for 47:36

The local Programm Kino is showing Johnny Suede over the weekend, so I took the opportunity to go and see it tonight (Friday). It was a crackly old print with both German and French sub-titles (which makes a change as a lot of stuff recently has been projected from blu-ray or DVD). I had almost completely forgotten this film which featured a then almost unknown Brad Pitt along with Nick Cage and a very brief appearance from Samuel L. Jackson (I guess also before he had really hit the big time). I liked it 20 years ago and I like it now, its one of those quiet films where very little really happens and Brad Pitt does quite well as Johnny gradually realises he doesn't really know who he is or what he wants. Anchor bay released this on DVD a while ago, perhaps its time for somebody to put it out on blu, how else will we hear Brad's potential as a rock star?.

A most violent year never heard of it so gave it a whirl .
Boy was I glad about a oil tycoon who someone got it in for him and robbing the drivers of his trucks . finds the police aren't quite as cooperative as he wanted them to be.
They are also trying to bring him down and filling alsorts of charges against him.
This is a prime example where it goes to show you don't need loads of star , special effects , CGI , action , violence , and any other thing .all you need is a good piece of film making with the right tension and atmosphere and youre into a winner a this film ticks all those boxes .
Highly recomended .

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THE UNINVITED (1944)

While walking the dog, a brother and sister come across an abandoned house over looking the cliffs in Cornwall. Wanting to buy the house, they become suspicious when the owner sells at a cheap price. One night, an ghostly sobbing noise is heard everywhere in the house..........

An excellent, good old fashion ghost story. There is romance and humour to be had too among the banging doors, candles and apparitions. Watch the film first before you view the trailer as the trailer gives some suprises away.
Recommended.

An excellent film. The Exposure dvd is a quality product with a gorgeous booklet.

If anyone wants it, you can order it from Exposure Cinema via Amazon marketplace for just over a fiver delivered.

Highly recommended.

I just ordered the Exposure dvd of Beyond a Reasonable Doubt. A classic noir starring Dana Andrews thanks to Dave Boy posting his Uninvited review and me checking on it's price for my reply. :)

Into the Storm (2014)

Daft, but very entertaining and practically a retread of Twister but with added shaky cam filming. Remarkably the shaky cam actually makes the film more exciting, probably because those filming the twisters know to point the camera at the storms rather than at their feet.

Despite one or two dialogue sequences which had me cringing at the ineptitude and a few cardboard characters, i found Into the Storm to be an enjoyable thrill ride thanks to some great special effects and a fast paced script.

Food Inc

8/10.

Ordered.

WATERLOO.

After reading over 20 Sharpe novels I had the sudden yearning to watch this. Thanks to finding it in the TV box sets section of cex(???) I got my chance.
Rod Steiger plays Napoleon and the film chronicles his escape from Elba, his re-taking of Paris and attempt to crush the European forces allied against him, led by Arthur Wellsley, aka The Duke of Wellington, played by Christopher Plummer.

Dino De Laurentiis produced this and it was directed by Sergey Bondarchuk. Its a 'mostly' accurate depiction, to scale with a cast of stars and thousands of extras, sweeping camera movements and a fantastic score. The only problem with the film is its 2 hours long, there is apparently a four hour version and this would probably serve the film better as a lot of stuff is left missing. One prime example is the Charge of the light brigade that seems to head straight to the French guns, seemingly missing out the part where they hit a French column, routed it and took two eagles. It's also difficult to recreate the rigid discipline and horrifying rate of musket fire from the British Red coats, who could manage around four shots in a minute. Also there is a lack of background detail regarding Wellington, with only brief mention of the fact that he was undefeated in battle against the french forces throughout the penisula campaign to liberate spain.

That said its a decent film, I would love to see it in its four hour entirety, hopefully if anyone deems the film worthy enough to release on blu-ray.

Assault.

A brutal rapist is targeting girls from a local school. Suzy Kendall plays an Art techer who managed to get a look at the nonce. The film plays like a British Giallo, the police are background detail at best, with Frank Finlay representing the detective, plenty of psuedo-psychological analysis and a witness who is not sure what they saw. Great slice of brit cinema, worth scouring your local CEX as its only £3.

The Hustler (1961)

10/10

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