What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[MrBarlow]

The Witch. 2015.

A classic tale on folklore, puritanism, possession, isolation and something dark and evil living in the woods. Not very appreciated the first time I watched it but now I totally love it, great acting and a nice Gothic style horror.

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[MrBarlow]

Midsommar. 2019.

Thought I'd give this another go, theatrical version or directors cut...IMHO either way this film is still quite shit, don't get me wrong the acting is good but the plot itself just gets weirder and weirder right up to the end, i'm still amazed I made it to the end credits.

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Have A good weekend all

[MrBarlow]

Gummo. 1997.

Something of a narrative, fourth wall mocumentary movie, this is very low budget that can have a shaky camera moments so those with motion sickness be advised. The film centers around a dystopian town hit by a tornado, two young boys go cat hunting with their air rifles (cat lovers be aware) Three young girls try and fulfill their lives by coming of age. Two Jehovah Witness brothers find a different religion. Writer and director Harmony Korine practically made a film with little to no plot and why someone goes about with bunny ears is never really explained and the actors do their best with it even though it does feel like everyone was part of inbreeding.

A film along with Trash Humpers I was recommended to watch, I wanted to hate this film but at the same time I found it to be likeable.

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[Justin101]

I love Gummo and prey to Satan for the day it gets a remastered HD release

That soundtrack too

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Zombies of Mora Tau (1957)

Zombies of Mora Tau isn't perhaps a great film, not even a great zombie film but from watching it for the first time last night it clearly is a hugely influential one.

As well as borrowing the voodoo elements of early classics such as White Zombie (1932) and I Walked With a Zombie (1943) it's a film that shows the way for zombie cinema to come...

... The idea that if you were infected by a zombie then you became one was first used in this film as were underwater zombies so perhaps Fulci recalled this as did the makers of Shock Waves (1977). Zombie sailors would then be used by John Carpenter in his brilliant film The Fog (1980). Countless times motifs from this were nicked by Italian zombie rip offs in the eighties too. You'll sit there as i did thinking "I'm sure there was something similar in so and so".

At seventy minutes the film is short and quite sweet, the decent black and white photography creating a nice atmosphere that in truth the very human looking undead were unable to deliver on. Still enjoyable though.

[Demoncrat]

Nico, 1988 (2017, Susanna Nicchiarelli)

Focusing on one aspect of a story says more about the director than the subject. Fair enough whilst presenting fiction, but this isn't fiction.
Starts in a rather crass, flippant manner, then retracks to fill us in on events leading up her demise.
Whilst the lead actor isn't all I'd hoped, when she starts belting out Janitor Of Lunacy, I was sort of impressed tbh.
John Gordon Sinclair plays the manager. His relationship with his client is under written and diverges into nonsense.



Velvet Goldmine (1998, Todd Haynes)

Revisited this with a fellow Bowie nut who hadn't seen it. His reaction was rather priceless, but having not seen the film in about 10 years, I felt that this is the time to start wittering on about it. At the time Haynes' homoerotic love letter to UK Glam was ... treated unfairly to be kind
But with yer current climate .... hmmm. Yes, it still has Obi Wan shagging Batman in it and there needed to be more corn beef jackets in it

[Justin101]

I've been meaning to watch Velvet Goldmine for about 20 years haha, perhaps this is the nudge I needed...

[Frankie Teardrop]

HORROR HIGH – Fun reimagining of Jekyll / Hyde in which a harassed nerd drinks the secret elixir he’s been working on in the high school chem lab and ends up connecting with his more homicidal side. The result – a little bit of mayhem and lots of the seventies-isms I find endlessly entertaining, such as trippy soundtrack music, flagrant bursts of slo-mo / weird lens effects and a smattering of badly done but vibrant gore. You’d be hard pressed to find a movie that looks more ‘1973’ than this enjoyable romp.

DOOR INTO SILENCE – One of Fulci’s final entries. John Savage is on the road, plagued by odd encounters with an enigmatic woman and the driver of a hearse who might’ve seen ‘Duel’ a few times too many. It’s fairly slight as swansongs go, and anyone going in with expectations of ‘The Beyond’ will come away feeling short-changed; although Lucio’s oddness is there to a degree in some of the shots, the editing, and moments of drifty, disconnected ambience, the lush aesthetic from many of his other movies is absent and, ironically for a film which is basically about one guy driving a car, at times it all feels quite pedestrian. Savage is a trooper with quite the resume, but I never thought I’d set eyes on him in a Fulci movie.

NOCTURNE – Blumhouse are always hit and miss, but ‘Nocturne’ is a strong offering. It’s a broadside against the perils of perfectionism in which the big dreams of a conservatoire student end in an even bigger Faustian f*ck up. Sydney Sweeney is very good as mousy but dead-eyed narcissist Julia, who seems to have taken a leaf out of Natalie Portman’s book, and in fact the look of the film as a whole is perhaps not dissimilar to Aranovsky’s ‘Black Swan’. This exemplary visual stylisation is one of ‘Nocturne’s strongest suits, and it brews an atmosphere that’s sometimes at odds with the more conventional storyline, which mingles the well-worn beats of the ‘underdog turning the tables’ narrative with supernatural froth. All the latter stuff may be standard, but ‘Nocturne’ makes the smart move of not overplaying its heavy handed genre tropes, allowing for a deeper sense of unease to surface following the arc of the main character’s slow self-destruction. The final image is cruel, expected, but weirdly ambiguous. Highly enjoyable and well worth a look.

[MrBarlow]

Dawn Of The Mummy. 1981.

A small group of models along with their photographer and treasure hunters disturb the tomb of a mummy.

A Egyptian pharaoh is awaken and bring his slaves, a bunch of dead zombies, this should be called Dawn of the mummy zombies. First time seeing this and had very little hope for it but surprisingly I actually enjoyed it. It doesn't look like it has a great big budget, the zombies look like they have just came from Zombie Holocaust, but the last 15 minutes certainly becomes a good blast.

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[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Demons (1985)

A fun horror romp with plenty of grue as demons tear up the seats and patrons in a Berlin cinema.

As per the norm the film is spoiled by Claudio Simonetti and his clunky keyboard rock soundtrack which removes all atmosphere completely. As the films music co-ordinator Simonetti doesn't appear to have any concept of fitting the soundtrack to what's happening in the film. Too often the music is intrusive and totally out of place. For example a group of kids exploring darkened corridors should have a spooky ambiance not bloody Motley Crue blaring out. Simonetti only manages to complement the music to movie scenes twice. Once with Billy Idol's White Wedding the background to some punks doing drugs in a car and then the slaughter fest finale as Accept's Fast as a Shark fills the speakers. This film isn't quite as bad as Argento's Phenomena, released the same year, for it's poor use of music but it runs it close.