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  #33201  
Old 13th July 2015, 11:49 AM
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Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs View Post
How did you come to break your hand MTDS?
Stupidity! We have a torso punch bag made of metal covered in foam, I was just reminding the little MTDSs to glove up before they punch it, and well, guess who thought they knew better!
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  #33202  
Old 13th July 2015, 11:55 AM
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5150 Elm's Way (2009)

Following a cycling accident, film student Yannick knocks on the door of Jack Beaulieu and his family and ends up locked up, tortured and fighting for his life.

Despite the fact i was gripped for the whole movie and felt a certain amount of tension throughout, the film was plagued by a sense of deja-vu in that i'd seen it all before and come the final credits, i'd seen it all before in much more cutting edge movies that took the kidnap and torture into more dangerous territory. More psychological thriller than torture porn, the film brings up many questions about right and wrong and if taking the law into our own hands is ever the correct solution.

That's not to say 5150 Elm's Way isn't a good film, it is. All the characters are well thought out but are let down in a sense by a script that ends up a little too pedestrian. Once the 'Beat me at chess and you go free' scenario entered the fray there was a feeling of inevitability about who would eventually win and how it would affect his psyche, even if i didn't expect the final game to be played out using corpses for pieces.

5150 Elm's Way is an intriguing thriller with horror overtones which is certainly worth watching but isn't up there with the best of 21st century French horror. It is however comfortably the best horror film around with Elm in it's title.
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  #33203  
Old 13th July 2015, 12:40 PM
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Originally Posted by Make Them Die Slowly View Post
Stupidity! We have a torso punch bag made of metal covered in foam, I was just reminding the little MTDSs to glove up before they punch it, and well, guess who thought they knew better!
Ouch!! Hug!!
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  #33204  
Old 13th July 2015, 07:59 PM
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First up four classic villain portrayals

The Devil Thumbs a Ride (1947) - A crackerjack of an hour with the expected sadism of Lawrence Tierney's hitchhiker psycho levened with unexpected knowing humour. This film feels incredibly fresh, almost Tarantinoesque in the way it plays with genre. In short it's fast, funny, mean, playful, sick and exciting - check it out.

Woman's Prison - Ida Lupino rules the roost and this picture as the cinemas most evil prison chief. Among those she brutalises are noir bad girls Audrey Totter and Jan Sterling - that's how bad ass she is. This is up there with Caged in the classic WIP list.

Gaslight (1940) - I loved the 1944 Hollywood remake with it's luxuriant sets, Ingrid Bergman emoting and all round quality but, man, Anton Walbrook in this version - the most OTT moustache twirling baddie ever? The League of Gentlemen have based their careers on this character! 'You have the wits of an animal!'I loved the mix of British humour and psychological torture here - a real classic.

Port of New York - textbook late 40s docu-noir with all the usual traits - specific locale/crime, undercover cops, portentous narrator, etc - what makes it memorable is Yul Brynner (with hair) as the posh voiced psycho heading up the dockside drug cartel - a lesson in how to be charming, eccentric and utterly terrifying.

Ransoms

The Big Sleep (1978) - The Winner version - another pot pouring of star cameos, wash wah music, flashy zooms, tits, godawful acting (looking at you Candy Clark) and, yes, guilty entertainment from MW. Relocating Chandler from the mean streets of LA to the English Home Counties is just the start of the madness. Mitchum sleepwalks through proceedings. Poor Jimmy Stewart miscast as General Sternwood and looking so old. Strangely the plot is a lot more comprehensible than the 46 version. Features worst car chases ever.

Crashout - mass prison breakout, a gang escapes the turkey shoot - can they disappear? Start again? What a cast - William Bendix, William Tallman, Arthur Kennedy. This is a brutal, brilliant film - some near the knuckle stuff that simply wouldn't be attempted today in a mainstream movie. The denouement in the snowy mountains is perfect.

Blueprint For Murder - So so sub Hitchcock shenanigans - did Joseph Cottens new wife really poison her daughter? Could she now do the same to her son? Trouble is the answer is obvious and my expectations weren't messed with half enough. Average.

Man in the Attic - Remake of The Lodger. Jack Palance as Jack the Ripper should be amazing but the ticks and sneers never come to the boil, there's no real tension or memorable set pieces - it's strictly a B lister.

Last edited by Handyman Joe; 13th July 2015 at 08:34 PM.
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  #33205  
Old 13th July 2015, 08:08 PM
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Originally Posted by Make Them Die Slowly View Post
Me too.

Going back to Martyrs, having broken my hand yesterday, there is nothing spiritual about pain! There is a certain irony to it all as I am presently reading a book on MMA that uses Nietzsche: Notes Towards a Philosophy of Ecstasy, as a framework for fighting and the act of being a spectator.
Man that sucks (re broken hand). Happy analgesia? Hope MTDS juniors (as in your kids, not an extension of Witching Academy) learned a valuable lesson, regardless. Sympathies dude, I hate pain!
Can't imagine Nietzsche executing a particularly winning spinning back-kick, but what do I know? I guess dying horribly of syphilis after shagging one person in his entire life taught him plenty about pain, though!
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  #33206  
Old 13th July 2015, 08:23 PM
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Originally Posted by Frankie Teardrop View Post
Man that sucks (re broken hand). Happy analgesia? Hope MTDS juniors (as in your kids, not an extension of Witching Academy) learned a valuable lesson, regardless. Sympathies dude, I hate pain!
Can't imagine Nietzsche executing a particularly winning spinning back-kick, but what do I know? I guess dying horribly of syphilis after shagging one person in his entire life taught him plenty about pain, though!
Thanks Frankie. No medication of note prescribed other than those to numb physical pain rather than existential pain
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  #33207  
Old 13th July 2015, 08:27 PM
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Cold fish.

A meek fish store owner, Syamoto, is living with his busty new wife and his daughter, both of who hate each other. Things are pretty tense at home, especially when his daughter is caught shoplifting. However, things seem to improve when he meets the charismatic Murata, owner of a rival fish store who smooths things over allowing Syamoto to save face. Murata is even kind enough to give Syamoto's daughter a job. However the audience is made aware all is not right when Murata rapes Syamoto's wife. Eventually the meek fish shop owner realises, too late, that Murata is a serial killer with a huge body count whose wife assists in the corpse disposal (and occasional killing for her own sexual thrills) and Syamoto is soon implicated. As things progress the twisted killers begin to unlock repressed things within the mild mannered shop keeper and things then turn especially nasty.

Even by Sion sono's own standards this is one twisted little picture. Especially in its depiction of sexual violence, sadism and corpse disposal. Apparently about two thirds of the film is pretty dead on in its depiction of a real and notorious killer sat on death row. However Sono alters things somewhat in the final third to make his own dark take on Japanese family views, filtered by someone raised as Catholic in Japan. This is something that can be found in quite a few of his pictures drawing a slight comparison with Abel ferrara in my own mind. The film probably classes as a dark comedy, but its depiction of the dysfunctional Japanese family struggling to maintain the stoic traditional depiction of the traditional family unit is perhaps a little close to the bone. Especially when the shit really hits the fan in the final third.

All told this is a great movie from one of my favourite directors and comes highly recommended.
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  #33208  
Old 13th July 2015, 09:02 PM
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Default The Signal

Very solid Sci-Fi flick which garnered much from its small budget. Likeable and believable characters breath air into an expanding and captivating mystery of a plot. The Third act dishes out some truly stunning visuals and the whole experience feels like a breath of fresh air when compared to the mainstreams recent habit of thrashing out the same tired concept with bigger budgets. I advise you to go seek this one out!
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  #33209  
Old 13th July 2015, 09:08 PM
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THE GUEST – Like 'You're Next', like so many recent cool, self-conscious horror / thriller / genre items, Adam Wingard's 'The Guest' is very much about the play of images, surfaces, textures and references. What do I mean by that? Well, it's shot to perfection, frame after frame carrying the weight of classic Carpenter, whilst the synthesiser soundtrack sounds like the eighties beamed in from the future (which is I guess what 'now' sounds like). It's a kind of cinema that hits the visual cortex rather than those bits of the brain which are more bothered with meaning and sense, which is good job, because the plot becomes increasingly derailed as it trundles on. Downton Abbey guy plays an honourable discharge who worms his way into the household of a family whose son died in combat. He's only too happy to help the family's youngest in his struggle against the high school bullies, and takes a shine to the household's indie chick sister, to the point of murdering her drug dealer mates and fitting up her boyfriend. Yes, those steely good looks and that unflappable manner had to conceal an utterly remorseless psychopathic predator, didn't they? Turns out it all has something to do with a top secret military experiment that went wrong for the purposes of latter day B-cinema, but we never really find out what really happened, and by the time the hokey red mist in a hall-of-mirrors showdown comes round, chances are you'll have pegged it all as an exercise in pop-corn stylistics and won't care about a sensible resolution. I'm not moaning about this, because I NEVER care about movies making sense. I mean look at most of the stuff I review on here, for christ's sake. I'd be a hypocrite if I were to have a go at 'The Guest' as being somehow empty and a bit barren because of its lack of depth and emphasis on looking good. Take Winding-Refn – he does basically the same kind of thing, and people think he's dead ace. 'The Guest' can't quite scale those heights of neon lit moodiness, and neither is it as good as 'You're Next', for my money. But it is a highly entertaining example of the kind of really slick, well made genre film which is becoming increasingly visible and palatable to a mainstream audience.
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  #33210  
Old 13th July 2015, 09:53 PM
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IT FOLLOWS

Was impressed.Nice to see an American horror film that isn't a 'reimaging'.
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