What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Stephen@Cult Labs

I actually don't find that remark in the least bit funny.

My apologies. No offence was meant. Just a play on the 'I'll get my coat' reference from earlier posts for liking films others don't.

[keirarts]

island of the living dead.jpg

Once the Italian film industry imploded, Bruno Mattai (here as 'vincent dawn') moved to the Philippines and continued making crappy but entertaining films. Here he continues his zombie films (from zombie 3, hell of the living dead) and has a crew of a boat get stranded on a remote island full of Spanish gold and zombies. It's under some kind of supernatural curse and the crew must find a way to escape before becoming lunch.
Make no mistake this is a terrible, terrible piece of s&^%. However, like a lot of Bruno's films its actually quite a lot of fun. Terrible dialogue, laughable acting, awful dubbing and genuinely bizarre scenes that make you wonder if someone was spiking the directors food with psychotropic drugs. It has a TV soap opera feel to how its filmed and large portions of the film seem to be the bemused cast wandering around discharging firearms. Still, worth a look if you can handle this kind of crap.

[Frankie Teardrop]

ENEMY - J Gyllenhaal obsesses over his own double in a waking nightmare courtesy of director Denis Villeneuve. Pretty excellent, I thought, and definitely quite an interesting move after the equally great 'Prisoners'. For whilst the latter was essentially 'just' a thriller, albeit one with a very dense, dark atmosphere, 'Enemy' plays like something from the pen of Roland Topor (in fact, it was based on a novel by someone else which I'm now going to have to track down). 'Enemy' has a detached, subdued quality, and tends to simmer with quiet menace rather than blast its audience with anything too obvious. There are incursions into overt surrealism however, with recurring spider motifs and intimations of some kind of underground sect veering towards the slightly more shrill side of things. All this doesn't upset the tone, and 'Enemy', which seems destined to attract possibly somewhat lazy comparisons to Lynch and Polanski et al, remains eerily baffling in its insistent strangeness. If it seems unresolved, it also feels too cryptic to be loose - and in fact the director suggests a very specific reading which makes sense of the film from a narrative point of view. Recommended.

FRANKENSTEIN VERSUS THE MUMMY - From that dude who did 'All Hallow's Eve'. 'All Hallow's Eve' was a real mess of a film, an anthology of stupidity which nonetheless satisfied with lashings of random weirdness and gore. I was frankly hoping for a similar approach here, but FVsM doesn't quite deliver. It is overlong, and flatly directed, with a straightforwardness that grates. This contrasts with some of its other qualities, for example, the kind of unabashed dumbness at the heart of AHE is resplendent here, and how could it not be? A plodding seriousness amplifies the stupidity - there's no humour or verve, which I for one applaud. Acting is perfunctory (apart from the Frankenstein monster, I actually dug what that guy was doing). Pacing meh. Style? There is no style, FVsM is styleless. Those hoping for an epic battle between the two famed beasts will feel cheated, as the fight doesn't kick in till the last five minutes, and is massively underwhelming when it does. There's a reasonable amount of gore throughout, but really this should've been ramped up a bit, as, beyond the WTF factor of its premise and the glum buffoonery of its execution, splatter and fx are pretty much all FVsM has going for it. Is that enough for a recommendation? Not really, but if you liked 'All Hallows Eve' for the same reasons I did, you might want to pay 'Frankenstein Vs The Mummy' a visit - you'll probably be only a bit disappointed.

[gag]

Originally Posted by Frankie Teardrop

ENEMY - J Gyllenhaal obsesses over his own double in a waking nightmare courtesy of director Denis Villeneuve. Pretty excellent, I thought, and definitely quite an interesting move after the equally great 'Prisoners'. For whilst the latter was essentially 'just' a thriller, albeit one with a very dense, dark atmosphere, 'Enemy' plays like something from the pen of Roland Topor (in fact, it was based on a novel by someone else which I'm now going to have to track down). 'Enemy' has a detached, subdued quality, and tends to simmer with quiet menace rather than blast its audience with anything too obvious. There are incursions into overt surrealism however, with recurring spider motifs and intimations of some kind of underground sect veering towards the slightly more shrill side of things. All this doesn't upset the tone, and 'Enemy', which seems destined to attract possibly somewhat lazy comparisons to Lynch and Polanski et al, remains eerily baffling in its insistent strangeness. If it seems unresolved, it also feels too cryptic to be loose - and in fact the director suggests a very specific reading which makes sense of the film from a narrative point of view. Recommended.

FRANKENSTEIN VERSUS THE MUMMY - From that dude who did 'All Hallow's Eve'. 'All Hallow's Eve' was a real mess of a film, an anthology of stupidity which nonetheless satisfied with lashings of random weirdness and gore. I was frankly hoping for a similar approach here, but FVsM doesn't quite deliver. It is overlong, and flatly directed, with a straightforwardness that grates. This contrasts with some of its other qualities, for example, the kind of unabashed dumbness at the heart of AHE is resplendent here, and how could it not be? A plodding seriousness amplifies the stupidity - there's no humour or verve, which I for one applaud. Acting is perfunctory (apart from the Frankenstein monster, I actually dug what that guy was doing). Pacing meh. Style? There is no style, FVsM is styleless. Those hoping for an epic battle between the two famed beasts will feel cheated, as the fight doesn't kick in till the last five minutes, and is massively underwhelming when it does. There's a reasonable amount of gore throughout, but really this should've been ramped up a bit, as, beyond the WTF factor of its premise and the glum buffoonery of its execution, splatter and fx are pretty much all FVsM has going for it. Is that enough for a recommendation? Not really, but if you liked 'All Hallows Eve' for the same reasons I did, you might want to pay 'Frankenstein Vs The Mummy' a visit - you'll probably be only a bit disappointed.

yes, Me and a friend fancied FvsM but he watched it before me and said not to bother wasnt very good.

[Demoncrat]

Originally Posted by gag

Hvae you seen tv series of lock stock ?
I thought it was pretty decent for a spin of show.

I thought it was pond scum

[gag]

Originally Posted by Demoncrat

I thought it was pond scum

Ah well each to their own.

[keirarts]

Originally Posted by Demoncrat

I thought it was pond scum

I thought I was pond scum. Women keep insisting I am!

[wongfeihung62]

Just been to see IT FOLLOWS and really liked it. Without giving anything away. Imagine if John Carpenter teamed up with Hideo Nakata and decided to make a retro horror movie, it could be something like this.

[monkeyscreams]

Originally Posted by wongfeihung62

Just been to see IT FOLLOWS and really liked it. Without giving anything away. Imagine if John Carpenter teamed up with Hideo Nakata and decided to make a retro horror movie, it could be something like this.

I liked it too. The opening shot feels like you are in Haddonfield. Also the electronic score (which is great).

[Hawkmonger]

Re-watched two Argento classics in Tenebrae and Opera.

Sitting down to watch good ol' Starship Troopers right now.