What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[James Morton]

saw the Brit horror TORMENTED on tv last night
not a great film and definitely would not buy it

[platostotal]

Originally Posted by Hawkmonger

I must have missed prity much all of them. Care to give some examples?

The stand out is when Brody pushes the baddie thru the glass ceiling and the baddie's hands slide down the frame getting shredded by broken glass so he falls, a nod to the baddie in CAT who's hands get shredded sliding down an elevator cable, in fact the whole falling thru a glass roof to end up face-up in a spreading pool of blood on a ornate floor has a definite whiff of SUSPIRIA about it, only it's a magnificent set piece in SUSPIRIA and in GIALLO it's just... meh. And the killer forcing the main victim to watch him torture/kill another victim is a bit like OPERA. Also THE X FILES references(lonely obsessed guy stuck in a basement at work, trying to solve crimes.) is about 10 years too late.

[mercury]

How do you Know(Reece Witherspoon)
Hana.....not quite the film I was expecting, but I found it to be very good
Chain Letter......disjointed, confusing and not very good.

[pedromonkey]

Originally Posted by James Morton

saw the Brit horror TORMENTED on tv last night
not a great film and definitely would not buy it

if it's the one where they kill the fat kid and he comes back as a zombie ghost thing, then yeah, piss poor excuse for a film. Alex Pettyfur is a douche of the highest order, i can't stand him.

[Gojirosan]

I saw Tormented last night too. Mildly amusing, fairly well made and the name Tuppence Middleton always makes me laugh. Not bad, but eminently forgettable and really rather pointless.

Mothra - excellent Ishiro Honda film from 1961. Much lighter than other Honda/Toho rampaging monster flicks. Very enjoyable. Some lovely jungle sets early on. And Mothra is a legend.

Big Tits Zombie - most amusing manga adaptation. Seems like an overblown home movie, but is nonetheless enjoyable for that. Preposterous and ridiculous, in the best way possible.

[Susan Foreman]

Originally Posted by James Morton

saw the Brit horror TORMENTED on tv last night
not a great film and definitely would not buy it

My landlady's daughter saw this at the cinema when it came out

She was 15 at the time, and told me that it was the 'greatest horror film ever made'

Sadly I believed her, and I DID buy it!!!!!

Shame on me

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Gojirosan

I saw Tormented last night too. Mildly amusing, fairly well made and the name Tuppence Middleton always makes me laugh. Not bad, but eminently forgettable and really rather pointless.

She sounds like a reject from St Trinians.

Seen Tormented before, its ok, nothing special, but watchable enough.

[Frankie Teardrop]

THE SHRINE - Pretty good supernatural horror set in rural Poland. Tense build-up leads to some nice atmospherics and a bit of gore. Has burning crucifixes and vague anxieties about women (then again, so do I).
BUNNYMAN MASSACRE - Misshapen TCM variant which is OK when it gets weird. A protracted scene with said Bunnyman and chainsaw victim put me in mind of some kind of Paul McCarthy performance out-take. The 'home movie' style projections over the credits should have been extended to feature length.
SLEEPING BEAUTY - Brilliant. A glacial exploration of alienated sex made with Hanekeeque icy elegance. Cold, clinical and creepy = must see.
BEAUTY AND THE BEAST - With gore and a rubbish CGI troll. When I wrote the last sentence I finally realised why I liked this so much. Yeah, f*ck the art-house, this is where it's at.
THE CHILDREN - The Albright 1980 effort as opposed to the one that came out a couple of years ago. From the era when you could actually take ludicrous subject matter seriously and still make a movie. A radiation cloud turns a schoolbus-full of kids into radioactive zombies with black fingernails. The kids kill their parents by hugging them! Heartbreaking! Oh well. Anti-nuke / Vietnam vibe, but portrays the parental victims as mean narcissists with counter-cultural affiliations so seems to be proposing a fairly skewed value system. Never mind, even I don't look to B-movie schlock for guidance over such issues. Like many of its 70s/80s ilk it manages to be simultaneously dull, amusing and bracingly nasty and contains some gloriously creepy moments. The knackered print Troma used for its 'lovingly remastered etc' special edition seems entirely appropriate in this case.
BREADCRUMBS - Didn't like it. Can't vouch for it.
DARD DIVORCE - Ittenbach! Very gory. Quite liked it, despite it being a load of bollocks really. Nice bit of product placement near the beginning - I'm led to believe a secret consortium of mainstream fast-food outlets is funding the German underground gore ecene.

[Gojirosan]

50/50 - flat and disappointing film from Jonathan Levine whose previous two films (All The Boys Love Mandy Lane and The Wackness) had both been very pleasant surprises. There is no spark or life to 50/50 and a charisma-free appearance by Joseph Gordon-Levitt in the lead really sinks what promise it does have. A shame.

Mary - I am not sure anyone does existential angst and intense spiritual crisis as well as Abel Ferrara. This superb drama covers similar ground to Bad Lieutenant (indeed, specifically quotes from it) yet within an entirely different milieu. An amazing cast is headed by Juliette Binoche (who I have never really rated before) and Forest Whitaker (who I rate highly, however, this is the greatest he has ever been). I don't know how Ferrara does what he does to get great actors to give even greater performances, but what he did with Kietel in Bad Lieutenant he does with Whitaker here. Astounding stuff.

[Gojirosan]

Having watched Mary, I was prompted to watch Bad Lieutenant again.

What is there to say? The film is a stone clad masterpiece. Easily within my all-time 15 or so films.

The old Laserdisc didn't look too bad either!