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  #33821  
Old 14th September 2015, 04:26 AM
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Watched a couple of different films tonight.

Cube - one of my all time favourites, shows that not all low budget horror sucks!

Curse Of Chucky - a fresh and welcome return to the original film's tone without the comedy of Bride/Seed.
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  #33822  
Old 14th September 2015, 07:07 AM
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Eaten Alive (Death Trap)

Neville Brand is a Hotel Keeper living out near the swamps with an enormous Crocodile. One night a hooker, thrown out of her cat house for refusing Robert Englund's demands for Anal sex, heads out to his hotel to spend the night. Brand wants 'none of that sort of thing' and promptly kills her with a rake and feeds her to the Croc. Pretty soon a young family turn up as does the hookers family and poor old Neville will likely need to kill again.

Death trap arrives on Blu-ray finally looking like it does, previous releases looked far to washed out and battered to really get across how the film should look. Hooper always intended a surreal, southern-gothic fairytale atmosphere to the film with a lurid, unreal colour scheme that makes the film look like pages from an E.C horror comic. The film is full of odd moments and characters, chiefly Brands character who seems to be perpetually wired from the coke that Englunds cowboy is supplying in exchange for use of his rooms. Maralyn Burns & William Finley play a couple who seem almost as outright weird. Burns character is a pill popping neurotic who wears a wig for no explicable reason and Finley seems to be tripping on something, constantly lapsing into weird moments where he believes he's lost his own eye and begins looking around the floor for it. The fact that he has a shotgun and shells lying around in the trunk next to the family luggage is somewhat worrying. Robert Englund is also terrific as the local ladies man buck, who seems to veer from playful man-child to ruthless, angry psychotic at the flip of a switch.

Death trap has some problems, mainly due to the chaotic nature of the production where Hooper ultimately walked off due to interference, certain moments don't work as well as they should. Dath Trap is an underrated film hower and deserves a reappraisal. The fact that a number of its harsher critics may have only seen the film in battered washed out prints probably factors in to this. Hopefully Arrows Blu-ray will change some minds.


Hard to be a god

On a distant planet, scientists from earth live among the medieval locals as gods thanks to their advanced knowledge, quietly they guide the locals to civilisation. However, its hard to be a god, especially when the locals are seen to be barbaric and difficult. One lord has begun a 'cultural revolution' after society threatened to enter a renaissance and the scientists are carefully shelterting and saving the intellectuals and artists the lord is having murderd. One scientist is seemingly 'going native' and has begun a relationship with a local woman, he struggles with trying to limit his interference with the locals culture and slowly things begin to unravel.

Hard to be a god will be a difficult film for some. Combined with the almost 3 hour running time Aleksey German delivers a film that has a style that may bewilder some of the audience. Every scene is densely layered, dialogue overlaps, in some scenes we enter mid way through. the camera seems to act as another camera, cast members seem aware of its presence and even look directly at it. Partly this is explained by the fact the scientists have cameras in built and we may be seeing through them, but combined with the theatricality of the performances and the strange movements of the camera it left me not quite knowing where I was in some scenes. The muddy, piss and shit caked sets that seem to perpetually rain look magnificently disgusting as do the unusual and grotesque characters the director fills the frame with. Overall though it worked for me as an immersive piece of cinema that given its subject matter on the difficulties of interfering with other cultures seems very relavant today. Certainly worth giving a chance to.
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  #33823  
Old 14th September 2015, 07:33 AM
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I'm very much looking forward to checking out Hard to be a God at some point. As soon as it's in an Arrow sale I shall be picking it up.
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  #33824  
Old 14th September 2015, 08:02 AM
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Watched CLOWN and TARANTULA over the weekend. Clown was mediocre; while Tarantula was entertaining. No extras on the Clown disc, I've yet to watch the Tarantula extras.
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  #33825  
Old 14th September 2015, 09:43 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by the commander View Post
looking for recommendations of something unique to watch.
Rubber is unique and brilliant. Holy Motors also fits that description.
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  #33826  
Old 14th September 2015, 09:57 AM
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Alien



I watched Alien with my flatmate who had never seen it before, he's a sucker for a strong female lead so I knew he'd love this one. Immediately he was drawn into the film and every time I looked over he was biting his fists with tension! He gasped out loud when Lambert slapped Ripley (we were watching the Director's Cut) and he seemed to be very concerned over the fate of the cat It never ceases to amaze me how well made this film is, to be able to make a haunted house film set in space, to make it scary and tense as well as very human is a good skill. My flatmate commented on how modern it looked and he expected it to look quite old fashioned for a film made in the 70's - I have to agree, apart from 'Mother' and the computer screens on display, there isn't much in the film to give away the period of filming.

The Maze Runner



I was going to go see this on the big screen, but at the last minute got cold feet, worried that it was going to be crap and £20 down the drain. Now it's on Sky Movies so I gave it a go. It's firmly in the "not as bad as I was expecting it to be" camp. I actually found myself quite enjoying this teen adventure movie which is both well made and well acted, in the most part. I suppose that the premise of the film is it's worst attribute, I found myself jokingly saying to my mate during the film "I've seen Lord of the Flies already", "I've seen Labyrinth already" and funny enough "I've seen Alien already..." in reference to the creatures inside the maze.
That being said, the action was well orchestrated and the tension was well executed, and I found myself holding my breath while scenes unfolded! Not a perfect film but very enjoyable and I'm intrigued about the checking the books out afterwards.
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  #33827  
Old 14th September 2015, 02:10 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by the commander View Post
looking for recommendations of something unique to watch.
Wrong Cops
Amer
Eden Log
The Voices
3 Iron
Life & Death Of A Porno Gang
The Apple
Taxdermia
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  #33828  
Old 14th September 2015, 02:37 PM
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Watched
Electric Boogaloo (2014, Mark Hartley)
What a hoot, from Lemon Popsicle to buying up Cannes, the whole hair raising story (well....). Recommended!!

Tender & Perverse Emanuelle (1973, JF)
Grubby, venal, sordid. But enough about my weekend. Who killed her? With Jack Taylor's face getting in the way of the investigation, we may never know.....the somewhat washed out print may add to this. Recommended?
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  #33829  
Old 14th September 2015, 08:56 PM
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Watched the amazing Russian film, Край (2010) released in the UK with the daft title of The Edge of War and the usual cover-art trying to sell a film as an action packed war movie.

Instead it is a beautiful arthouse production, darkly ethereal, set in a remote forest internment camp deep in Siberia for those considered traitors by Stalin for having been captured by the Germans during the war. Trains race through long endless forests, a strange abandoned locomotive sits on an island across a river, the main character struggles to find it and discovers a feral German woman hiding aboard. Very little happens, yet so much does.

If you like smart movies, this is one for you - The Edge review. The Horizon DVD is meh, but the best available with English options.


Also, that was my 500th review!

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  #33830  
Old 14th September 2015, 10:03 PM
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Saw Class of 1999 last night. This dumb schlocky 1990 flick with Stacy Keach, Pam Grier, Malcolm McDowell and Fright Night II sex goddess Traci Lin sees three humanoid androids sent into reinstill discipline into a school overrun by gang violence, but they soon go out of control and start killing the students left, right and centre. Have fond memories of this, and there's some fun to be had, especially in the first half, but it gets a bit tedious toward the end and hasn't aged all that well. Keach is having fun hamming it up as the mad scientist behind the project, and Traci Lin is gorgeous, but compared to FNII there's not much to her character and she has little to do. A bit meh.
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