You might enjoy it Dem. I've never really seen the original show.

Me neither.

There's a chance i'll like it more than you as i'm now going into it thinking it's the shittest thing to hit cinema screens. :nod:

Its one of those films that frustrated me because it could easily have been better.

Working my way through recent viewings a bit at a time.

The Grey, 2011, Joe Carnahan.

An oil drilling crew flying home at the end of the season crash land in the merciless Alaskan wilderness. On top of the freezing blizzard conditions the men very soon become the prey of the regions grey wolves.
Fortunately for this band of roughnecks among their number is none other than Liam Neeson a man with a very particular set of skills.😊
See he plays John Ottway, a hunter employed by the oil company to protect the workers from the constant threat of wild animals in the area.
Of course even with Brian Mi...i mean John Ottway on hand the wolves very quickly gain the upper hand, picking the men of one at a time.
And therein lies the problem i found. These men crash in the middle of nowhere, hundreds of miles of snowy wilderness. There's only half a dozen of them vs. a seemingly endless army of wolves, so why do the wolves craftily pick them off one at a time like a damn slasher villain? Well I'll tell you, because otherwise this film would be done in about 15 mins. That said i did enjoy The Grey. It was quite slow, certainly compared to director Joe Carnahans previoud effort the rollicking action update The A - Team. Not sure i'd really recommend it but the scenery is stunning, Neeson is good value as ever and if like me you've a soft spot for man vs. nature flicks then its worth a shot.

I do, but not for man vs CGI wolves flicks. ;)

As I remember, that's how I felt about it.

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) - 8.5/10

It was really good, we both loved it and one bit made me cry (my friend said the girl next to him was in tears at another bit as well). The destruction of Metropolis at the beginning of the film shown from Bruce Wayne and others' perspective was INCREDIBLE, really putting you right there in the middle of an alien invasion.

The film is sprawling, and plays out like a graphic novel, I can see why people are complaining about it jumping from one thing to another, but it worked fine for me. The fight between Batman and Superman was amazing, but shorter than I was expecting. The fight Batman has later on in the warehouse as seen in the trailer (partially) was absolutely insane, sheer perfection and left my mouth wide open. The post-apocalyptic 'Knightmare' sequence again was magnificent and I can't stop thinking about it, especially seeing it in IMAX was mindblowing.

My problems with the film? Jesse Eisenberg seemed like he was in a different film to everyone else. Junkie XL's part of the score was quite repetitive and sometimes too much. The whole Doomsday thing wasn't all that great, but was OK.

Go see it, don't give it a miss because some film critics said it isn't a good film, it wasn't made for them. I want to see it again already and will probably go tomorrow afternoon.

Yeah the critics are needlessly hating on the film me and my daughter watched it last light as a double bill with Man of Steel, although I was chuckling at the end of Man of Steel with the destruction just thinking Hmmmm Batman is going to be so pissed. Like previous poster said the actual Batman Superman fight was suprisingly short and I wasn't too keen on how the issue was resolved. Doomsday was totally underused but I liked the Lex Luther character. Looking forward to Civil War next.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015)

I have to admit i do like Guy Ritchie's way of film making. He brought a new breath of life to British gangster films with the much imitated but never equalled Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch and reinvented Sherlock Holmes for the 21st century with two very enjoyable takes on the classic detective.

Here Ritchie applies that same cool style he used on Sherlock Holmes to The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Everything's very slick and you can't really look away or you'll miss a slight of hand trick or a cameo from David Beckham. Armie Hammer and Henry Cavill appear to enjoy themselves as the two leads and ‎Elizabeth Debicki brings that ice coldness to the screen that she uses to perfection at times in The Night Manager. Hugh Grant takes on the Q / Jim Phelps role and adds his usual touch of Hugh Grant to it as the director of operations and come the end it's all rather beautifully set up for a sequel as Grant informs the team including Alicia Vikander, of a new assignment in Istanbul.

Except it's doubtful there will be a second outing for U.N.C.L.E. as the lurking feeling at the credits is of what could have been rather than what you've just seen. Behind all the cool, the humour, and the glamorous Italian locations there isn't an awful lot of story. Or so it seems. Problem is there is a lot of story. Including nuclear weapons and Nazi butchers plus plenty of backstory for Hammer and Vikander. It seems Ritchie and his script editors forgot to make it exciting or indeed very interesting so whilst the style and charm is apparent the plot isn't. Although the film is an enjoyable two hours it will never wow you and on the whole will probably prove instantly forgettable.

A shame because i'd actually like to see a sequel.

You've well summarised my feelings very well. It's a film which wants to be something bigger, smarter, and more detailed than it really is, but doesn't quite know how to do it, meaning it becomes bogged down in unnecessary information rather than moving on to the next plot point. At other times it is incredibly shallow and, to paraphrase Shakespeare, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

In terms of the sequel, it'll probably be in the same boat as the recent Fantastic Four, which was the beginning of a film series, but wasn't commercially or critically successful enough for the studios to think the investment will be worthwhile.

My wife said that it was like watching a film made by two different directors who weren't even attempting to collaborate.

That interpretation makes a lot of sense! The directors could also have been working from different scripts based on the same story as well!

Unusual insight from my missus. Doesn't normally have much of a critique on films. Either it was good or it was bad.

It seems she thought The Man from U.N.C.L.E. was a bit of both.

The Craft (1996)

New girl in school, Robin Tunney, hooks up with three wannabe witches after she shows to have powers of telekinesis. The four bond and find that witchcraft is a big help when it comes to getting through the day, both with relationships and various physical and emotional worries. Before long one of the girls, an excellent Fairuza Balk, goes after real power and witchcraft becomes more than just a game.

The Craft skillfully mixes a potent brew of mostly believable characters, underplayed special effects work and some nice creepiness bordering on out and out horror. Featuring an attractive cast of soon to be stars, together with an intelligent script, a cool soundtrack, a glossy visual style and smart direction help lift this above the usual teen high school flicks.

The Craft is a real favourite of mine and my enjoyment of it never diminishes even with repeated plays. I like it as much now as i did when i saw it 20 years ago on the big screen.

Started collecting these with my kid.
http://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/2016...053a4e6ff5.jpg

Should these be in the Bought thread or did you cram them into your blu-ray player? :lol:

There were loads of these going at £6.99 in the BBC shop sale. Now there's only John Watson, Mycroft (looks really cool) and Irene Adler from Sherlock.

Balls yeah, wrong thread. Although i wouldn't out it past my son trying to get them in the player. Little sod sat there grinning the other day because he'd managed to shove 3 discs in my ps3 at the same time.

LYNCH MOB – Quite a fun indie horror which pitches mobsters against the cannibalistic denizens of a small hamlet. In probable homage to '2000 Maniacs', the latter are undead ghosts because of an ancient curse cast against them for being horrible slave murderers back in the day. A creepy mob informer whose taste for torture is one of his more wholesome predilections is hiding out in the small, small town... pretty soon he realises that if he wants to keep alive it's not just the cops who he has to strike deals with. 'Lynch Mob' goes on for a bit long, but doesn't feel too padded. There's lots of splatter, most of it quite effective. The tone is darkly comedic but doesn't strain too far in the direction of broad laughs, which would always be a temptation with this kind of material. Nice to see Tony Darrow playing true to form again. I'm always a bit disappointed that he never quite manages to match what must've been the pinnacle of his career, the 'Street Trash' end credits theme. “I'm gonna eat your fockin' eyeballs like grapes” he sang back then, and sadly 'Lynch Mob' isn't a musical (although it could've been a pretty good one), but even so I'm pretty sure at least someone here gets their eyeballs munched at some point, or failing that some other part of their anatomy. Worth checking out.

ZOMBIE FIGHT CLUB – Some kind of viral outbreak has led to a zombie takeover. Bad news for the residents of a high rise apartment block – they're about to be massacred by the undead, of course. Here comes a SWAT team to sort it all out – hold on, they're only in it to nick some money off a gang. Everyone else is a rapper shagging some girls, a girl shagging some rappers, or on drugs. Or a school teacher who's doing his own daughter. ZFC has been accused of ripping of 'The Horde'. 'The Horde', which is objectively a much better film, was about siege type dynamics in a high rise zombie situation, whereas ZFC is just a random series of episodic zombie attacks. In lieu of any sympathetic characters, and because it so clearly is just the same old shit refried and repackaged, ZFC understands that the only way to get a bit of momentum going is to throw loads of crazy stuff at the wall and hope that some of it sticks. So we have a little incest, some random mutoid 'The Thing' type references, then an abrupt left turn into Mad Max 3 territory, all drenched in a heavy shower of gore. Don't get excited – that's CGI gore, an acquired taste. But all things considered, ZFC, which comes from the hands of the guy who made the equally wacky 'Zombie 108', does manage to mark itself out from the multitude of flesh munchers ordinaires on the back of its sheer stupidity, and, by the time we're suddenly told - “it's three years later. Society lives underground and is governed by that milquetoast pedo teacher from earlier on, who has somehow risen to become a kind of Nazi general surrounded by dominatrix concubines. Folks, he's decided to rip off 'The Walking Dead' and has a tortured relationship with his now undead daughter, who he keeps chained up. Everyone else gets stuck in a gladiatorial arena and is ripped apart by zombies” - quite frankly, we're not that surprised. 'Zombie Fight Club' – it's pure shite, concentrated until poisonous, then converted into a stream of zeros and ones and burned onto disc by someone who probably died of a disease. You might like it. Most people probably won't. Maybe it's the future.

Greatest summary of any film ever.

We both enjoyed it, Frankie.

I may even have bought it after reading your recommendation, can't remember. I must've had it a while before sticking it on the other day, and was pleasantly surprised as I couldn't figure out where it had come from... been noticing that with a few DVDs recently, like "I can't remember getting that". I used to binge buy a lot more than I do now, so perhaps that's where the answer lies.

I've started to binge buy a bit more this year. You can possibly tell that from todays post in the Bought thread from me.It's fun, but nothing to expensive just in case things are woeful.

The only one of that particular haul I've seen is 'The Redwood Massacre', which I was a bit scathing about in my review from last year. It's quite gory though, and also has quite a funny bit where there's a flashback scene to when the killer murders his entire family, which shows him laughing like a massive comedy madman with an axe... small fry really, but out of place enough to seem a bit zany.

EATEN ALIVE
Aka DEATH TRAP, this follow up to Tobe Hooper's TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE doesn't quite reach the heights of that classic, but still has a certain claustrophobic atmosphere of its own, interspersed with some gruesome ( and some quite bizarre ) moments, all held together by a manic performance from Neville Brand.
Having seen this one a couple of times before, Arrow's blu ray is a revelation - the EC style colours ( particularly the reds! ) popping from the screen. Indeed, seeing clips from Dark Sky's previous dvd release, the upgrade in quality is astonishing.

THE PERFUME OF THE LADY IN BLACK
Mimsy Farmer stars as a woman who begins suffering from strange visions and hallucinations, leading to a gruesome finale in this bizarre cross beteeen ROSEMARY'S BABY and the cannibal movies from Italy in the 70s.
Raro's blu rays can be a bit hit and miss, but this is a terrific looking edition, with wonderful colours and detail.
Not your typical Giallo, but well worth viewing.

SWEET SUGAR.

Early 70s WIP film that has a fluffy sense of fun to it amongst the usual shower scenes, whippings and cat fights. It is also slightly mad with prisoners blowing up machines to measure orgasms, torture by having cats thrown at people and a voodoo sub plot and a mad scientist one too.

I watched it last night actually.

It was reasonably well done. Good locations and an impressive hulking brute killing machine and decent camera work. It didn't really gain much interest until the sixty minute mark when a cliched local type appeared brandishing a shotgun and then something must have clicked with the film makers that they were boring everyone shitless because it took a great upturn in momentum and actually became marginally thrilling.

John Wick (2014)

Keanu Reeves is one of those actors whose career always seems to be on a slow downward spiral until some shit hot action film reignites his Hollywood flame. Point Break (91), Speed (94) and The Matrix (99) all brought him back from the verge of acting obscurity and John Wick is the latest example.

Sliding slowly away following the release of final Matrix film Revolutions, suddenly he's back tearing up the screen in a masterclass of bullet strewn violence.

There's not much in the way of plot - Some Russians he used to work for kill his dog, so Wick kills them, and that's it basically, yet somehow it works where the plot heavy Man from U.N.C.L.E. for example, didn't.

The film is an assault on the senses from start to finish. Turn up the volume and let the sub woofer throw you from your couch as the bullets scream, cars roar, neon lights tear at your eyeballs and Marilyn Manson's excellent Killing Strangers brutally pounds your eardrums to mush. John Wick isn't a film for sensitive souls, nor for next door neighbours.

I look forward to 2017 and John Wick: Chapter Two. As for Keanu? Can't wait to see him staring meaningfully into the distance in Refn's forthcoming The Neon Demon.

Fantastic film, action porn.

Just got back from Batman v Superman.
Snyders sequel to Man of Steel is bigger, louder and flashier than its predecessor but is it better? Afraid not.
I enjoyed it but there were some serious issues. Being such a new film I'll keep plot details to a minimum. The film actually starts during Superman and Zods battle from the end of the original, seen from Bruce Wayne's perspective. Seeing the admittedly massive collateral damage caused the Dark Knight gets it into his head that Superman is just too powerful and too dangerous to be flying around unchecked. I don't want to give anymore away suffice to say we next get introduced to Jessie Eisenbergs totally doolally Lex Luthor and soon after we get Gal Gadots Wonder Woman.
So the issues? Character motivation.
Batman is hellbent on Supermans destruction. Why? Why so badly? Ok there was a lot of collateral damage caused in Man of Steel, one of the big criticisms of the film, i get that. Doesn't make it Supermans fault.
Superman had been here since he was a child, Zod coming to earth was the problem. Zod wanted to turn Earth into the new Krypton, not Supermans fault. A lot of destruction was caused in the battle, of course it was, it was inevitable. Surely Batman is intelligent enough to have seen all that.
Lex Luthor, whats his deal? Buggered if i know. His motivation is simply not explained. Does he want Superman dead? Does he want Batman dead? Why? What for? At least in Bryan Singers Superman Returns, Kevin Spaceys Lex had a plan. Crap one maybe but a clear plan. Here Eisenberg just seems to be causing trouble for no particular reason. He doesn't seem to want anything.
I'm not sure why Wonder Woman was in the film at all, all i can assume is it a way of introducing her for future films.
The film is long and sprawling but it just seems to struggle under its own weight at times. Better character development and motives would have made all the difference. I suppose it helps that before Marvel attempted Avengers they had all the characters introduced with solo movies first but its still saying something that Joss Whedon was able to fit all his characters into one movie comfortably with a nice coherent plot. First time around anyway.
There appear to be rumours of a much longer directors cut and done right this could actually be a good thing.

Absolutely no idea how you follow on from John Wick. :confused:

Robert Fuest's The Final Programme, perhaps?

Good call, Hawkwind are in it.

Cool, Hawkwind, here i come!

Goodnight. :couch:

Don't expect a big performance from them

Michael Moorcock, who wrote the original story, has said that he originally envisioned the band as providing the music for the entire film, and also appearing in the scene with the nuns playing slot machines where Jerry is trying to buy napalm. Hawkwind, and Moorcock himself, can in fact be glimpsed briefly in this scene right at the back of the set

Director Robert Fuest, however, did not like Hawkwind and had music with a jazzy feel placed into the film

Sorry, wrong thread.

It's been officially announced that it's coming to Blu-ray, it's 30 minutes longer.

As long as it's character development and plot detail then i think it will help the film massively.

STRANGE BLOOD

A scientist looking for a universal cure for all illnesses accidentally finds himself in a cheapo rip off of Cronenberg's The Fly. Stick to The Fly.

Trespass

Bill Paxton & William Sadler play a couple of firemen who discover a map that may lead to a fortune in missing gold. It all seems like easy money as the building the treasure is stashed in is an old abandoned factory at the edge of town. Unfortunately the place is not as abandoned as it first seems as the place is the Turf of King James, leader of a vicious street gang played by Ice T. Paxtons character stumbles upon the gang killing someone off and a stand off ensues between the gang and the firefighters. Taking King James crippled brother hostage and unwilling to walk away from a fortune the tension ratchets up steadily as the two characters look for a way out from the mess.
Essentially a 90's update of The treasure of the sierra madre using the increasingly popular urban genre to give it a modern makeover. Walter hill delivers the goods here admirably making use of one location and a limited cast to deliver a compelling action thriller. Ry cooders score is excellent and comes across quite similar to the one he delivered for Last man standing. This really needs a Blu-ray

House of Bamboo

Robert Stack plays a military policeman who goes undercover as a lowlife named Eddie Kenner on the postwar streets of Tokyo to infiltrate a gang of ex G.I's led by the Psychopathic Sandy Dawson played to perfection by Robert Ryan. The gang is a tough nut to crack as they have a policy of killing any gang members who look like they might be captured. Eddie hooks up with a deceased gang members wife Mariko played by Shirley Yamaguchi and begins to fall in love as he slowly gains the gangs trust irritating Dawson's equally psychopathic 'ichiban' Griff played by Cameron Mitchell. Things come to a head when Eddies identity exposed which leads to a brutal showdown on the Streets of Tokyo.
I highly recommend anyone who hasn't seen this film to try and get a copy. Directed by Samuel Fuller its an almost perfect crime movie shot in beautiful cinemascope with beautiful cinematography and almost perfect framing. The film is a master-class on how to frame shots and film moving scenes. The acting is almost universally great, the plotting is excellent and the whole film feels rooted in film noir. It could be questioned as to why Robert Ryan's gang never runs into conflict with the Yakuza however that aside this is an almost perfect film in my opinion.