What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Frankie Teardrop

GOBLIN – Todd Sheets' 'Goblin'

Is it wrong to admit to owning and liking a few of Sheets films.

The Witching
Nightmare Asylum
Prehistoric Bimbos in Armageddon City
Dominion
and of course Goblin.

This world of film making is a dark underworld that very few Labbers would dare enter, and if they did i'm sure they'd soon depart in a degenerative state crying out for oxygen and the latest 2K release of whatever they can get their withered fingers on.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Outpost: Rise of the Spetsnaz (2013)

Origins film that takes place before the first two films in the series. This British effort utilizes the same set as part two due to the fact that director Kieran Parker served as producer on the others and didn't want to waste the admittedly great set.

Obviously a quite cheap production but you wouldn't really know it as it's all professionally made with good use of German military equipment. Where it fell down for me was in it's darkness. The film was totally lit in dark green hues which often turned black probably to create atmosphere, but all it said to me was 'Surely even mad Nazi scientists need light to work in!'.

Whilst the film was fast, violent and nicely frenetic the story was just too basic to really capture my imagination meaning along with the darkness that pervades each and every scene it never held much interest.

I must admit the script did feature one of the coolest put downs i've heard in ages.

I don't know what cursed thing your mother ****ed under a full moon but she owes us all an apology.

Try Frankenstein's Army instead.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Culloden (1964)

Peter Watkins seminal docudrama on the 1746 battle of Culloden. What turned out to be the final throes of Bonnie Prince Charlie's Jacobite rebellion and the final subjogation of Scotland by the English.

Watkins filmed this with non-professional actors, actually the people of Inverness, in a tv news style, meaning a film crew was at the heart of the battle commenting and interviewing participators on both sides. The film pulls no punches. Neither side comes out with any respect or sense of achievement, with the English (I'll get back to this in a moment) under the command of the Duke of Cumberland, shown as a sadistic invading force brutally persecuting anyone they came across in their march northwards to destroy the Highland clans.

What Watkins focuses on and makes the whole thing even worse is that the so-called English army that murdered and pillaged weren't actually English. Many of them were lowland Scots from the Campbell clans who sided with the English and hated their Highland brothers who all followed the Macdonald clan. This wasn't the first time this happened either. Notoriously, some 60 or so years earlier the Campbells had slaughtered 38 of the clan Macdonald in Glen Coe, but that's another story. Scottish history is a fascinating blood thirsty subject by the way.

Makes me wonder what would have happened had Charles Edward Stuart not taken his army as far south as Derby in a threatening gesture to English ruler George II just a few short months previous.

The battle plays a big part in the film. It's not skirted round as many docs might do. Watkins gives us a minute by minute run down of the whats, why's and hows with detailed examinations from the battlefront of the plans and weaponry of both sides. The camera is there in the thick of the fight as cannons fire and men are cut down.

This is possibly the finest documentary i've ever seen. It's a completely gripping experience that deserves all it's plaudits and hopefully through this splendid new BFI release will gain a whole new level of audience appreciation.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Bridge of Spies (2015)

Talky but intelligent and gripping true life story of an American lawyer (Tom Hanks) enlisted to defend a Soviet spy (Mark Rylance) in the American court. As events escalate, a U2 spy plane is shot down over Russia and it's pilot captured meaning the lawyer is unwillingly recruited by the CIA to arrange a swap with the Russian authorities between the pilot and the spy in the inhospitable Eastern sector of Berlin.

Steven Spielberg's film is set in 1957 just as the Berlin wall goes up. The film has an oppressive atmosphere to it with East Berlin seemingly just as dangerous and formidable a place under Russian rule as Paris for example was under the Germans. This especially being the case for Americans as tensions with Russia were constantly rising.

Bridge of Spies, as with many of the best Cold War thrillers isn't an action film, in fact being true to life even less so, as quite obviously additional fictional scenes weren't filmed to give it sense of Bondian adventure and gain extra bums on seats in cinemas.

Is the film recommended? Of course it is. Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks don't make poor films. No matter what any deluded soul over in the corner may claim.

[keirarts]

Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs

Bridge of Spies (2015)
Is the film recommended? Of course it is. Stephen Spielberg and Tom Hanks don't make poor films. No matter what any deluded soul over in the corner may claim.

1941 & et!

[Inspector Abberline]

Originally Posted by keirarts

1941 & et!

Are you the deluded fool in the corner? 1941 is a masterpiece,I hope you know how to wrestle naked as I think your in trouble. Ill get the Vaseline.

[keirarts]

Originally Posted by Inspector Abberline

Are you the deluded fool in the corner? 1941 is a masterpiece,I hope you know how to wrestle naked as I think your in trouble. Ill get the Vaseline.

I'm confident. I studied with oliver reed I'll have you know

[Nosferatu@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs

Bridge of Spies (2015)

Mark Rylance is magnificent as Rudolf Abel, quietly overshadowing Tom Hanks in every scene in which they both appear and the ending carries a real emotional punch. I didn't know it before I saw the film, so was surprised to see the screenplay was (along with Matt Charman) written by Joel and Ethan Coen – it's very atypical piece of work for them, but still has the quality you'd expect from such talented wordsmiths.

This is from Wikipedia:

Matt Charman became interested in Donovan's story after reading a footnote about him in An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917–1963. After meeting with Donovan's son in New York City, Charman pitched the story to several studios and DreamWorks bought it. Studio co-founder Steven Spielberg became interested in the film and decided to direct. Marc Platt and Kristie Macosko Krieger attached themselves as producers along with Spielberg. Joel Coen and Ethan Coen revised Matt Charman's original script. According to Charman, the brothers "were able to really punch up the negotiations on the back end of the movie, then they handed the baton back to me to do a pass after they did their pass, to make the movie just sit in a place we all wanted it to. The flavor they brought is so fun and enjoyable. It needed to be entertaining but truthful."

Originally Posted by keirarts

1941 & et!

E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial is a brilliant film but, and I'm not sure how, I've never seen 1941.

[keirarts]

I must be one of the few people that thinks E.T is a very weak film and one of Spielberg's lesser entries.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by keirarts

I must be one of the few people that thinks E.T is a very weak film and one of Spielberg's lesser entries.

As always it's each to their own.

Personally i think Hook, A.I. and Munich are weaker films by Spielberg.

I've never seen Always, Tintin, 1941 or The Sugarland Express.