What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[Justin101]

I enjoyed My Soul To Take

[Gold6082]

Originally Posted by Justin101

I enjoyed My Soul To Take

aww sorry I did try to enjoy it honestly!

[bdc]

"A woman looks to a cop for help against her abusive husband, who constantly rapes, beats, and belittles her and her son, but the husband catches wind of the cop's plan."

Nasty shocker from the "salad days of Cat III" featuring the ever reliable Anthony Wong.

The version I watched had subs (the HK CC dvd has none) which takes me back to my first viewing (vcd-rip on vhs!)...obviously there's some cuts,the most obvious ones being part of the attack on Julie Lee (probably pre-release) which probably would have made this even stronger to stomach...also the end credits feature more disturbing (deleted?) scenes that are not in the movie. It's a real mystery this one and I'd love some more info on it all.

[Gold6082]

We are Still Here

The Fantastic Barbara Crampton and her Husband move into a house in a nice snowy US town,their son has recently died and they hope unusual encounters are his presence in their new home... not quite this film blends a nice mix of original & predictable and comes out with an enjoyable yarn which at times can get confusing. 7/10


Last Shift

Complete Borefest Dross. A rookie policewoman takes her first overnight shift at the cop shop and encounters all kinds of weird and nasty. The film tried to throw together a mix of stolen plot from "the eater" which featured in both Urban Gothic Season 2 in the Uk & In The Usa in the short lived "Fear Itself" series. Then tried to do a Val Kilmeresque character from the Traveller.

It does not know where it wants to go and fails miserably on all fronts. Even the evil presence couldn't decide whether he wanted to go out in his leatherface mask or his Trick R Treat Mask so threw a sad imitation of the 2 crossed together 2/10


Premontition.


Poor show from the team involved in Dark Water & The Grudge. A bloke who has worse acting skills than the entire cast of Eldorado combined reads a "Newspaper of Terror" not the Daily mail though being asian which tells him his daughter is dead and died at 8pm. As 8pm approaches you guessed it....

anyway after walkiing around the accident scene like he has piles and needs to relieve himself and throwing himself on the ground being winded by his wife tapping his back he crawls across the road on all fours doing an impression of a Gibbon in heat. After finally getting up off the ground the film moves forwards 3 years. Again he gets a premonition from the "newspaper of Terror" and blah blah... Obviously it's a right wing paper

This film trys to be a mix of Final Destination,Grand theft auto & Back to the future and screws up nearly every single aspect. 2/10



Confessions

My Asian Double Bill improved vastly with this second film. This is quite possibly one of the best Japanese films I've ever seen. It is original,clever downright nasty,surreal,odd and with hints of black Humour.

We are even treated to an irrelevent scene where a teacher dances left to right with a tambourine while he and his pupils sing along to the 1979 Kc & The Sunshine Band Track "That's the way I Like It" O...k it was probably added as light relief from the brutal no holds barred premise of the rest of the film.

This film goes back and forth in time and is very clever as well as excellent it requires a great deal of concentration any interruption you'll lose the plot literally. 9/10


Pernicious

Odd film where 3 slappers visit Thailand and upset a statue that looks like a human shaped chocolate coin in foil. after walking backwards into it (yes that's right simply walking into it) Tapping on the wall with a hammer to raise zombies anyone? (Burial Ground) the upset foil wrapped wench overtakes all 3 of the women's bodies and forces them to exact brutal revenge on 3 halfwits that don't exactly paint us Brits as decent people if these 3 are our representatives. They then the next day get amnesia "what happened last night" blah blah... watchable but nothing to write home about 3/10

[Demoncrat]

Was going to watch Pernicious, but was more taken with Boof's white dress haha. Ahem.

Watched
Don't Open Till Xmas (1984, Edward Purdom)
Not as squalid as I had hoped, this still has a lot to recommend it, if only to see Alan Lake in the 80s haha. Would make a great double bill with Xtro, as it also had that blend of sheer and utter tedium and strangeness that Brit cinema had at this point.

Inspired by this, I rewatched Night After Night After Night (1969, Lewis J Force cough!) for the umpteenth tiime. Someone is going round bumping off tarts, and local lothario Donald Sumpter is suspect number one.....sleazy is an understatement with this one, note the charming sequence where DS knobs one bird, whilst being spied on by a schoolie (?) then rolls over and starts snogging her....I believe that from the films point of view that "she wants it" haha. Yewtree over here please

Devils Rejects

"aren't I ****en funny???!!"

Still his best film imho.

[Frankie Teardrop]

THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN – The new one. I was slightly intrigued to find that the original had been remade, it being something of a mere footnote in genre history (I'm not a fan). This revamp gives it the meta- treatment to a weirdly wholehearted degree – it features drive-in snippets of its predecessor, is set in the same town and uses the folkloric embellishment of the film's 'true-crime' inspiration as its own springboard. Basically, a second series of killings happens in latter day Texarkana, and one of the town's new generation finds she's being stalked by a hooded murderer – looks like she's got herself a mystery to solve etc etc. The plot might be plain to the point of being down-home, but the conveying is a bit odd, with slightly abstruse camera angles being tossed out into passages of gaudy lighting during frequent bursts of semi-stylisation. There's a handful of freaky scenes, too. I mean, death by modified trombone - well, if it hadn't already happened in the first one, someone'd have some explaining to do. The ending flopped a bit, but that's the only real bad I can think of to say about this interesting flick, which pitches itself somewhere between dreamy meander and slightly brutal slasher / mystery.

CONTRACTED – A woman takes a break from her other half and shags a mystery guy at some party. Disappointingly for her, she develops a severe skin condition and begins to worry that her period is maybe just a bit too full-on. Various irritants in her life come round, hang out, hold pointless conversations then go before mystery guy turns out to be wanted for something really bad (possibly necrophilia in a government lab) and it all goes Horror in the last twenty minutes. 'Contracted', the newish one from the guy who brought us 'Maddison County', has shades of 'Thanatomorphose' about it, but is probably closer in concept to Andrew Parkinson's sleeper classic 'I, Zombie'. In truth, it's less grim than the former film and way less bleakly inspiring than the latter. Like Maddison County, its strength lies in build up and incidentals – by which I mean aspects at a tangent to the horror / fantasy, in this case a world of crap friends, bad relationships, wandering around, rubbish jobs etc etc. 'Contracted' has its feet too firmly planted in 'essentially inspired by Cronenberg's 'The Fly'' territory to really dally with the kind of 'post-Horror' approach I've seen creeping in over the last few years or so, but there is enough of that going on here to make the final reel seem a bit clumsy and artlessly done in contrast to what comes before it. Again, that's similar to how 'Maddison County' panned out as a film, and I guess 'Contracted' will possibly disappoint some fans in the same fashion – I suppose I mean people who would want the more 'in yer face' elements of the last few minutes to predominate. On the whole, it's a strong film in many ways – well acted, well paced, interesting and not so obvious in execution if not in concept – although I'm kind of waiting for a definitive statement from the obviously talented director (or, I think he is, anyway).

CONTAMINATION – Oh, the memories. Back when I was a kid and 'Contamination' was a 'video nasty', the only version which came with a barcode always seemed to hang around on dodgy market stalls in Northern towns. I'd walk past what would be my own copy for weeks on end. Looming through the chip fat fumes, case battered and sticky, it looked like a relic from a foetid realm beyond my grasp. Not some warehouse. Not some video depot. A different PLACE. And how it beckoned, tilting through the fog, out of reach, somehow untouchable. Too horrible to contemplate, let alone take home. I knew that it couldn't possibly live up to the slimy and wretched images that coursed through my mind when I gazed upon the blurb on the back. But that somehow didn't matter. And, on the day I finally managed to rally enough courage to speak to the man with the glass eye and get it home under a needlessly furtive handshake, I found out that, yes, it was cut. And that the lingering stench of curdled chip fat from the market had followed me into my house and wouldn't leave. But something about that cover, about the prone, ripped up form of the guy in the hazmat suit, still seemed to promise the unspeakably nasty. The washed out, grainy picture and muffled dubbing still hinted at barely excised horrors lurking just beyond the oxide of the tape (or those censor's snippers). In short, 'Contamination', or the VHS copy I coveted so feverishly, was an emblem, a latter day talisman invoking a different realm, the taboo, the strangely sacred.
Now it's in HMV (or, in my case, the latest Arrow sale), I don't quite feel the same way about it. Hmmm. Things have moved on, in many ways.
At least we can see it now AS a film, rather than as video toilet paper. As everyone knows, it's Luigi Cozzi's 'Alien' rip-off featuring some slimy eggs which make people explode for no reason, a rubber monster with a headlight for an eye, lots of wandering about in South America, and Ian McCullough as a very bitter ex-astronaut. It's not very good. Or maybe it is. I couldn't tell you, because sometimes for me watching films like this is what listening to The Beatles is for some people ie. they stop taking it in, stop processing and feeling it, 'cos it's just THERE. I'm not a Beatles fan, by the way. I'm more into The Velvets. Actually, I'm more into 'Contamination', for that matter. And I've noticed, one thing that a lot of 'these kind of films' (by which I mean mostly Euro exploitation from the seventies / eighties) have in common is that they always have a ratio of 'boredom to awesome to ridiculous' qualities which varies from case to case but is rarely ever quite 'bang on'. Here, there is boredom (need I elaborate?), there is, granted, some awesomeness (the music, bodies exploding in creepy slow motion etc) and there is certainly some ridiculousness (the rest of it). The ratio is a little too weighted in favour of boredom for my liking these days, but it is still respectable. A ripe film. I still like it. What more can I say, really? By the way, this isn't a whinge along the lines of “everything's rubbish now it's not on a VHS tape that's been puked on”, because I'm full of admiration for the likes of Arrow for continuing to put this kind of thing out (and 'Nekromantik', too! Wouldn't have bet on that one, even a couple of years ago). Just weird how things change. S'all.

[iank]

Saw The Naked Gun last night, for the first time in far too long. An absolute classic, packed to the brim with brilliant one-liners, sight gags and fabulously bonkers non-sequiturs, anchored by Nielsen's brilliant deadpan lead performance. One of the best comedies ever made, and pretty much the definition of a perfect film. They really don't make them like this anymore!

[Zann]

Pink Flamingos

Must be getting jaded...I found the weirdest and most unsettling thing about this the grandmother that spends her days in a cot enthusing about eggs, getting anxious about there not being anymore eggs, messily eating eggs and marrying the oddball that supplies her eggs.

[keirarts]

Cronos

Guillermo Del Toro's debut sets the tone for a lot of his subsequent films, firstly there is the fascination with Vampires. Not the teen girls scared of mortality, wants to bed a good looking but dangerous guy fascination. More, the same fascination an entomologist would have for a bug. We get the whole life cycle and biological process of vampirism from infection on as an elderly antiques dealer is accidentally stung by an Alchemists Cronos device and becomes infected, ultimately becoming a 'pet' for his seemingly mute granddaughter. Del Toro's approach to vampires is refreshingly different to a lot of modern cinema's, while he seems intrigued and attracted to the idea of the vampire he seems at the same time sceptical. When the Alchemist who created the device is found dying in a collapsed building his final words in Latin translate (and I may be paraphrasing here) 'everything at the right time'. The film is littered with allusions to time from the name Cronos, who was the god of time in the Greek pantheon, to images of clocks and calendars throughout. The director feels that its important to accept that we are going to die and embrace it in order to live to the fullest. The films vampire groupie, the sickly industrialist whose nephew, played by Del Toro regular Ron Pearlman, is providing the muscle to obtain the device lives and isolated and barren existence in an upstairs room of his factory, which itself seems barren of staff aside from his nephew who seems to be waiting for him to die so he can inherit his fortune. Therefore the Vampire in a Del Toro film is also something repellent, most directors and writers spend a lot of time re-writing Vmpire Myth, a lot of which Bram Stoker nicked from Irish Faerie lore, in order to make the idea of becoming a vampire more appealing. Through Cronos, and subsequently Blade 2 and The strain, the vampire is an other, radically different and barely human in the conventional sense. If anything, the prospect of becoming a vampire in a Del Toro film is far less appealing.
Various other ideas resurface in Del Toros work, the films structure, that of a fairy tail would be repeated to a certain extent in Pan's labyrinth and Devils Backbone, both of which also feature a taste for bizarre often surreal creature imagery. In fact even his more 'commercial' Hollywood films manages to fit these ideas in, from the workspace of Hannibal chau in Pacific rim which focuses on the Kaiju Biology, the strange otherworldly menace of the roaches in Mimic, which also features a similar grand parent - grand child relationship along with a strange fascination with creature biology. Blade 2 takes the hip clubbing vampires from the first and mutates them into abominations not dissimilar to the one in cronos and The strain takes that design one step further. The Hellboy films, while based on an existing graphic novel show a fascination with monsters, making them the heroes and similar visual styles for set and creatures are evident, its sequel Hellboy 2 is more like a Del Toro picture with its focus on fairy tale story structure and creatures.
As for the film itself, it holds up beautifully and really manages to feel as fresh as it did back in the early 90's. The effects hold up wonderfully and while some of the more modern audiences may find its pace a little slow in places its still a fantasitc vampire movie.

[keirarts]

Dead of Night

An early British anthology film from Ealing studios, Dead of Night tells the story of an Architect who heads to an English country house, only to experience a sense of Deja Vu along with a very real sense of dread. The other guests tell a variety of ghost stories, from the hilariously funny to the genuinely creepy. A psychologist attempts to explain the stories away but as the evening progresses it becomes more apparent that the premonition is coming true.
Dead of night has aged fairly well, its perhaps not going to have the same affect on an audience that it would of had on release but its still a terrific horror film that influence Amicus to release a string of anthology films through the 60's and 70's. The Blu-ray release looks magnificent.

The Killing + Killers kiss

Decided to start watching Kubricks films now I have the box-set. Starting with these two from Arrow.

The Killing is a surprisingly brutal and effective heist movie about the robbing of a race track. while the film was written by Kubrick, the script has a lot of work from Jim Thompson, one of Americas best crime novelists and as a result has some terrific dialogue and some superb depictions of human evil and greed. Kubrick orchestrates things with a meticulous eye for detail and the film plays with time and structure in some very interesting ways as the film switches between different characters viewpoints.

Kubrick Followed this with another Noir piece, this time about a down on his luck boxer who falls for a dame with a jealous, and very dangerous boyfriend. This one reeks of the seedy underbelly of the city, malt liquor and cigarettes as everything unfolds. Like with the Killing Kubrick delivers some startling B&W photography and some very well executed scenes including some brilliantly choreographed boxing that must have been some influence on Scorsese for Raging Bull.