What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[Justin101]

Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs

When i listened to the album for the first time this week Buffy Sainte-Marie was the standout song for me.

I've never heard her before in all honesty, but she's singing one of my absolute favourite Joni Mitchell songs so I had to post it. Upon looking into it though, I think it's another case of Joni writing a song for someone else before recording her own version like she did with Judy Collins and 'Both Side Now'

I also loved all of the Laurel Canyon nods in the Tarantino film as well, including a little cameo of Mama Cass and the name drop of Dennis Wilson, with whom Charles Manson lived with for a little while with some of his girls.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Justin101

I've never heard her before in all honesty, but she's singing one of my absolute favourite Joni Mitchell songs so I had to post it. Upon looking into it though, I think it's another case of Joni writing a song for someone else before recording her own version like she did with Judy Collins and 'Both Side Now'

I also loved all of the Laurel Canyon nods in the Tarantino film as well, including a little cameo of Mama Cass and the name drop of Dennis Wilson, with whom Charles Manson lived with for a little while with some of his girls.

Yeah, me too. It was like little easter eggs just for me as i'd read a couple of books on the music from the Canyons in the past year.

Oh, and, I'd never heard Buffy before either.

[Demoncrat]

52 Pick-up (1986, John Frankenheimer)

Cannon does Elmore.
Roy Scheider and Ann-Margret are married.
But Roy's been a tad silly, so a trio of quirksome individuals have taken advantage of this and now want some money. I've read a fair few of EL's crime novels, and they are all littered with these rather flamboyant creations tbh. Plus it's the Go Go boys .... so it's not PG ahem.
Jon Glover's finest hour?? Hmmmm ....

[MrBarlow]

American Yakuza. 1993.

Nick Davies saves the life of a Japanese businessman unaware he is part of a Japanese Mafia and slowly earns their respect and joins them. While a war rages between the Japanese and American mafia, Nick is keeping a secret from his new family.

This was a decent low grade action flick starring Viggo Mortensen in one of his early leading roles before kicking a helmet in L.O.T.R movie and breaking his toe. The Hidden and Flash dance star Michael Nouri stars as the Italian/American gangster and able to pull off a decent role. American/Japanese star Ryo Ishibashi stars as the man who introduces Nick the the world of the Yakuza. There is some small action and fight sequences, from the early 90s the film was enjoyable to watch.


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[Demoncrat]

The Stabilizer (1986, Arizal)

Peter O'Brien stars again as our titular mullet wearer, and what a mane it is. Nearly worth a review on it's own, I will just say that there is one shot that you could show to someone and say "this was the Eighties ... "
Ahem.
A work of art doesn't have to be conventionally pleasing in such piffling terms as beauty or representation IMHO.
Some naughty types want to corner a particular market. Our man has other ideas. A mosiac of mayhem ensues. Recommended.

[Demoncrat]

Originally Posted by Frankie Teardrop

MY DEAR KILLER – I had vague memories of the opening JCB decap, and of the more vicious circular saw murder later on, but nothing about ‘My Dear Killer’ seemed to have stuck from when I saw it in its ‘Shameless’ incarnation years ago. Watching it again on blu-ray, I was struck by the moody visuals and the latent claustrophobia, ironic for a film which makes good use of scope. ‘My Dear Killer’ suffers from an overly complex plotline that really does bog down the mid-section with numerous red-herrings and talky bits of exposition. But this labyrinthine narrative, which is also pretty mean-spirited in places, is enlivened by many arresting moments, literally in the case of the final scene, where the self-righteous detective guy goes around a drawing room and makes all the suspects stare at their reflections in a murdered child’s broken mirror! Agatha Christie this ain’t.

HELLRAISER: JUDGEMENT - I don’t know much about the ‘Hellraiser’ franchise, I kind of tuned out after the second sequel and I only bought this after reading Dem’s enthusiastic review from a while back. HJ turned out to be quite enjoyable, an impressive mingling of very standard DTV detective serial killer drama and a wholly unexpected strand of imagery that does actually aspire to a certain level of ‘Barkeresque’. Part exquisite grotesquery, part meat-and-potatoes, it’s a weird little feast for sure, but might whet your appetite if you like things that resemble cheap heavy metal videos from twenty years ago (I mean that as a compliment, it’s an underused aesthetic). In a way though, what tickled me most was all the cod-bureaucratic wrangling at the end between Pinhead and a representative from ‘The Other Side’. It just seemed a bit silly, not really the kind of ominousness I think the filmmakers might’ve been going for, but an interesting direction for the series to explore nonetheless. Actually, credit to those involved, the ultimate fate of Pinhead in this is pithy and slightly profound.

XTRO 3 – The original ‘Xtro’ is a bit of a high watermark of gonzo cinema for me, so it’s inevitable that its sequels must fall short in some way. ‘Xtro 3’ falls quite a distance in that regard, actually. Instead of a dream-distorted bad British soap-opera with spurts of body horror, we have a standard nineties DTV-type exercise wherein some military reprobates have been sent to an island serve as a feint for an internal cover-up operation (the ‘covered-up thing’ in question being an angry alien who’s been kicking off due to a Roswell-style drubbing he once received courtesy of high command.) It could all be quite so-so, and to an extent it is, but for those able to overlook a slight initial drag factor there’s actually plenty to entertain, from some nicely gooey special effects to bizarre bits like the one where a character gets stuck in a cocoon, only to be randomly menaced by said angry alien. Not ‘Xtro’, but quite a good laugh when all’s said and done.

THE CELLAR – Kevin Tenney gave most of us fond memories with films such as ‘Night Of The Demons’. ‘The Cellar’ is a monster movie with a backdrop that’s a couple of steps removed from that hoary eighties trope, ‘house built on a native American burial ground’, but is still generous enough to make room for another overused idea, ‘the kid who no-one believes because he keeps bollocking on about monsters in cellars’. As much as I wanted to enjoy ‘The Cellar’, I found I needed a lot of patience to get through it; something in the atmosphere wasn’t working. The appearance at the end of a charming monster didn’t quite make up for all the moments of drag and non-engagement. A bit of a wasted opportunity, although eighties die-hards will probably want it.

GRAVE SECRETS – Interesting to see a few ‘actors of arguable talent’ (Paul Le Mat, Renee Soutendijk, David Warner) slumming it in ‘Grave Secrets’, a film with a distinct direct-to-video-at-the-fag-end-of-the-eighties vibe. Le Mat is a fairly unrealistic university-based ghost hunter who sets out to unravel the mystery of Renee’s haunted B&B. The backstory that eventually emerges has a surprisingly grim tinge and gives occasion for a semi-transparent ghost effect to stumble around a room with menacing intent, so points on for all that. Elsewhere, there may not be much gore or horror jiggery-pokery, but there are computers with blocky graphics, along with other endearing period distractions. I enjoyed it, although I would have preferred that enjoyment to have come in the form of a two quid second hand dvd rather than an expensive boutique blu ray.

THE FRENCH SEX MURDERS – I remember this from ages ago. Now it’s back, lovingly refurbished on blu-ray, a film with an unbeatable pitch – it’s a giallo featuring a Humphrey Bogart impersonator! Nothing is actually made of this within the universe of the movie itself, where HB goes around investigating some ‘French Sex Murders’ as if he’s the most obvious plot device in the world. He’s not even in it very much, just dips in and out – all of which kind of sets the tone of ‘The French Sex Murders’, an exercise in continental randomness that couldn’t be made this side of the seventies. Psychedelic murders with filtered visuals, obligatory sleaze and a bit of gore in a brothel, and the ludicrous decapitation of a motorcyclist (which in turn spawns an equally ludicrous subplot involving the experiments of sinister pathologist Howard Vernon) all feature. Given the above, I was disappointed when the usual giallo-related drag factors (uninvolving procedural etc etc etc) blunted the wacky edges a little, but still, ‘The French Sex Murders’ is a charmingly nutty product of its time.

As always ....

Digging out TFSM as I remember little and that review just hits my spot sir ...

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Demoncrat

52 Pick-up (1986, John Frankenheimer)


Jon Glover's finest hour?? Hmmmm ....

Smallville for me. He was a star in that as Lionel Luther.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Return of the Jedi (1983)

Look i couldn't just watch Empire with THAT ending, i had to know what happened next so Return of the Jedi it was.

As Justin alluded to earlier, the Lucas ****ing about does take something away from this film, mainly in the opening third, in fact the whole Jabba's palace act felt like it was from a different universe to what had gone before in The Empire Strikes Back, from it's extended band sequence to the burping Sarlacc pitt, it strained credibility a little.

However it really picks up during acts II and III with the space assault on the new Death Star, the battle on Endor and Luke coming face to face with the Emperor, and as usual my spine tingled as Darth Vader saved his son by killing the Emperor.

One or two sequences made me smile as usual. Luke asking Obi Wan's spirit why he never told him when he was alive that Vader was his father. Naturally Obi Wan replies with some convoluted bullshit when what he meant to say was "George had no idea his first space opera would become the global phenomenon that it did, spawning two sequels that had absolutely zero storyline at the time the first film was released".

Incidentally as i was searching for the poster to finish this post with i noticed a load of Return of the Jedi related questions on Google. Clicking on them expanded the question with an answer.... A question that appeared to have been written by a brain dead dickhead answered by another brain dead dickhead.

Why are Ewoks hated?

People hate Ewoks because people think they're ugly and have stupid stuff about them that it it is weird that they were loved when the movie first came out, now porgs have overtook them in fan-reception, people have grown to despise the Ewoks

[gag]

Not seen yet, but going to see a Quiet place II this afternoon,
Meant to have gone yesterday but a friend turned up, conjuring 3 has beat a quiet place at box office.
https://www.variety.com/2021/film/bo...ce-1234989351/

Ps never seen a single film in the conjuring universe.

[Justin101]

I'm going on the record with this hot take. I like Ewoks



Edit, just found this EPIC depiction of the fandom's hatred of Ewoks, this picture is called Porg Vs Ewok