What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[Nosferatu@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by J Harker

Am I the only one who can't stand Mark Kermode? An abhorrent critic who puts himself on high and deems to tell me what I should think as opposed to what he thought.

I have always thought Mark Kermode was very insightful and passionate, someone who is opinionated and forthright about everything from film to music, and is at his best when making commentaries or documentaries about films he loves – The Exorcist, The French Connection, Blade Runner, The Shawshank Redemption, The Devils, The Wicker Man, Silent Running, and Local Hero come to mind.

I think he does important work curating films and hosting film festivals (particularly on the Isle of Man and Shetland), championing small cinemas and filmmakers whose output would normally disappear.

The Secrets of Cinema TV series he and Kim Newman made was incredibly well researched, written, presented, and edited.

Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs

I used to like listening to him on a Friday afternoon with Simon Mayo but he almost became a caricature of himself the more famous he became.

Now since he left 5Live i've not listened to him at all.

I'm the same. I used to listen to the Friday show with Simon Mayo, whether live or as a podcast, but I haven't listened to anything since they left and have only seen a handful of YouTube videos.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

The Creeping Flesh (1973)

Freddie Francis' Hammer esq film is pretty much a Tigon production in all but name. It's depiction of evil as a skeletal figure which grows it's own flesh back when exposed to water has similarities to Blood on Satan's Claw from a couple of years previous, it also shares the same desperately bleak feel as well. In fact this is a grim an entry in the Gothic cannon as British horror gets.

Despite being perhaps one of Peter Cushing's less heralded roles i do think he gives one of his best performances even though he's partly in Frankenstein mode and comes across as sympathetic yet obsessed with his work. A special mention to Lorna Heilbron too. Notably a tv actress, she's terrific as Cushing's daughter and is largely at the centre of the plot throughout in fact the middle and final thirds are as much about what happens to her as Cushing.

Christopher Lee actually top bills the film even though he's not in it that much although when he is he plays a proper bastard as an asylum's curator.

The film is well directed at a swift pace by the excellent Freddie Francis. Francis uses many long shots and gives the film a sense of bleak desolation as the creature stalks the countryside in the form of a black hooded putrefying ghoul. However he also seems to return to shots used previous such as the creatures eye view as it attacks Cushing in a sequence strikingly similar to his 1965 film The Skull.

[Demoncrat]

Blind Date (1984, Nico Mastorakis)

Joseph Bottoms loses his sight, but Keir Dullea has a solution ...
Looks sane enough, but is up there with his best. Kirstie Alley pops up to emote and stuff.
Recommended.
PS Gerard Kelly plays a thug. What more do you need folks?



Terror Squad (1987, Peter Maris)

Chuck Connors has a bitch of day ahead, what with some ragheads shooting up his town and the like. Quite bonkers in parts this one, as it's as if The Breakfast Club turned into Dog Day Afternoon ahem.
Lawdy.




Triple Cross (1992, Ackyl Anwary)

The Rothrock fights The Stabilizer.
Recommended highly (if you can find it cough)

[MrBarlow]

Singing In The Rain. 1952.

Another film I had no interest in watching and not even sure if I would actually enjoy it, but for a Saturday morning flick this was good. Gene Kelly and Jean Hagen are a famed Hollywood duo making the transition from silent movies to talkies. This seems to be a bit of a spoof/comedy as to what can happen does happen with the movie industry making a dramatic change but adds in plenty of laughs and comedy especially with Donald O'Connor who seems to have some mishaps in his life and never lets anything get him down. I'm glad I rolled the dice and took a chance on this one for entertainment, great story, great songs and dance numbers.

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[Frankie Teardrop]

DOPPELGANGER – I’m indebted to Dem for digging up this strange Drew Barrymore flick, which I’d never even heard of until its Cult Labs debut. It’s a hard one to pin down alright – how many movies pitch as De Palma clones, veer off into drifty neon LA half-dreams, then mutate into KNB fx body melt bonanzas? I haven’t come across all that many. Barrymore plays a troubled heiress type who lands in Tinseltown and shacks up with a struggling writer. Most of the preamble juggles mismatched roomie quirks with a psychotic undercurrent involving Drew’s ‘other half’ – her crazed, stalkerish double. Is she really being pursued by her doppelganger, or is she just a bit highly strung? There’s definite rhyme and reason in there and it more or less computes by the end, but the non-stop procession of mild oddity makes for such a crazy quilt. Watch as Drew takes a shower of blood and after ten minutes wonder aloud whether you dreamt it (you didn’t!). Look on as Drew does a sexy dance surrounded by a roomful of total nineties LA pricks, has a nosebleed, then freaks out at a PTSD-inspired murder apparition that resembles a computer-generated kid’s tv gore hologram. Ponder why every five minutes a mysteriously Bava-lit scene pops out of nowhere to liven things up with zingy colours, then realise it’s because Drew’s garden sports a ridiculous glowing water feature. Above all, ask yourself why you should always turn to a sex phoneline manager for advice about the paranormal. Oh yeah, then at the end a woman transforms into a worm that knocks out two stop motion skeletons! Cool! Aesthetics are all over the shop, a veil of TV movie-esque sound palette and direct-to-video nineties sheen that parts to reveal tilted angles, long shadows and wonky neo-noirism. The muscles will knot in your face as you strain to piece it all together. Is this some grand vision or a desperate cock up? An arch parody or a load of shit that someone threw into a blender, thinking they’d get a movie? I don’t want to know. I can’t imagine that this was very well regarded at the time and I’m pretty sure that these days most will find that they can’t make it through without a smirk here and there, but no-one can really rule out whether this was the film David Lynch had in mind when he made ‘Mulholland Drive’. Am I joking? A hypnotic time capsule that piles slick artifice atop transcendental bafflement and taunts you with its many secrets. It’s ace. I’m in the queue if they ever do a blu ray.

RESURRECTION – Staying with the nineties, when movies about bible-fixated serial killers were all the rage, ‘Resurrection’ features Highlander guy as a cop on the trail of a murderer who loves to quote the Psalms. I’m not decrying Lambert as an actor, but he totally hams it whenever he tries to express any heightened feeling – you could imagine his face in slow motion as he does a long, drawn out “Noooooo….” ‘Resurrection’ is very of its time. The constant raininess, the sallow lighting, the air of portent as we drift through grotty rooms and corridors, all point to some very obvious influences. It has its quirks, though. The killer possesses a vibe that makes me think of some kind of weird crossover between Steve Buscemi and Klaus Kinski. The splatter is fairly demure in that nineties manner, though not always – there’s a really nasty hindquarter leg amputation in a filthy warehouse, and the central image of a rotting ‘FrankenChrist’ in a room full of TV monitors is quite bracing. Silliness goofs in and out of focus with bits like the impromptu rooftop baby juggling at the end. Ultimately, it’s a familiar trek down a path well-trodden, with some nice diversions and gnarly detours to make up for the occasional sense of “aren’t all films from its day somehow a bit like this?”. It’s no ‘8 ½’, nor even a ‘Se7en’, but when it works it’s a good solid six.

[MrBarlow]

Sunset Blvd. 1950.

William Holden plays a young screenwriter who enters a relationship with a faded movie star Gloria Swanson who is trying to make a big triumphant return to the big screen.

Something new and different for me to watch and again a classic film that never appealed to me but this one did. Both main leads with Holden doing the narration in this little drama/film noir thriller is amazing to watch and director Billy Wilder knew how to captivate a audiences attention right from the start of the film to the end. The film does focus a lot on the more unglamorous/dark side to Hollywood and may have made some of the stars uncomfortable at the time but also adds in some humour and tragedy. Cecille B. DeMille and Buster Keaton do make a nice small appearances playing themselves along with Hedda Hopper and H.B. Warner.

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[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Fatal Attraction (1987)

The film that kick started the erotic thriller genre and became an eighties phenomenon. Directed by Adrian Lyne and starring Michael Douglas as a happily married company exec who has a weekend affair with a publishing company editor (Glenn Close) whom he first met earlier in the day. It's when Douglas attempts to break off the relationship that Close turns from clingy to extreme as her psyche begins to erode.

Glenn Close is brilliant as she descends into lunacy, the bunny boiling scene has gone down in macabre cinematic history and although you know it's coming it still thrills and kind of shocks with it.

The film sports that very 80's look, both in a fashion sense and a filming style, with many scenes looking tv movie quality even though the blu-ray is supposedly a 4K restoration by Lyne himself. However it doesn't take away from what is still a slick, powerful and well made thriller which ups the suspense the longer it plays.

[Justin101]

Originally Posted by MrBarlow

Singing In The Rain. 1952.

Another film I had no interest in watching and not even sure if I would actually enjoy it, but for a Saturday morning flick this was good. Gene Kelly and Jean Hagen are a famed Hollywood duo making the transition from silent movies to talkies. This seems to be a bit of a spoof/comedy as to what can happen does happen with the movie industry making a dramatic change but adds in plenty of laughs and comedy especially with Donald O'Connor who seems to have some mishaps in his life and never lets anything get him down. I'm glad I rolled the dice and took a chance on this one for entertainment, great story, great songs and dance numbers.

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This is one of my favourite films ever - absolutely fantastic.

[nosferatu42]

The Red Shoes

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A film i've heard a lot about but wasn't sure if i'd get on with, I've had the dvd for about 5 years and never got around to it despite loving "Black Narcissus". Anyway it was on BBC 2 as one of their Saturday matinee type old classic films they do each week. So i thought i'd watch 5 minutes.

20 minutes later i'd dragged out my 2 disc copy. Not only did I watch the film but also the majority of the extras.

Phenomenal.

It's about a ballerina who gets taken under the standoffish wing of a self obsessed and ultra focused ballet director.
While at the same time parallel a young composer is in the same situation.

Eventually the young couple fall for each other but by that time the director has developed his own obsession with the ballerina.
The complexities of the relationships are mirrored and shadowed by the ballet of the Red shoes that they all work on.

This may not sound the most riveting watch, but the compositions of image, the dancing, the acting and the tense relationships all add up to a truly one of a kind film.

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It may seem lightweight at first but by the time we get halfway through the film and the striking and surreal ballet is performed over around 15 minutes as a pure piece of cinema you realise this is no mere fanciful film.

There is a dark undercurrent of obsession that runs throughout the film, the dedication to art to the point where it is your life and gets in the way of every other aspect, ultimately pursued to a not always happy ending.

I really didn't expect to be as caught up in it as I was.

A Masterpiece.

9/10

[MrBarlow]

4

Originally Posted by nosferatu42

The Red Shoes

Attachment 250164

A film i've heard a lot about but wasn't sure if i'd get on with, I've had the dvd for about 5 years and never got around to it despite loving "Black Narcissus". Anyway it was on BBC 2 as one of their Saturday matinee type old classic films they do each week. So i thought i'd watch 5 minutes.

20 minutes later i'd dragged out my 2 disc copy. watched the film and then the majority of the extras.

Phenomenal.

It's about a ballerina who gets taken under the standoffish wing of a self obsessed and ultra focused ballet director. while at the same time parallel a young composer is in the same situation.

Eventually the young couple fall for each other but ny that time the director has developed his own obsession with the ballerina.
The complexities of the relationships are mirrored and shadowed by the ballet of the Red shoes that they all work on.

This may not sound the most riveting watch, but the compositions of image, the dancing, the acting and the tense relationships all add up to a truly one of a kind film.

Attachment 250165

It may seem lightweight at first but by the time we get halfway through the film and the striking and surreal ballet is performed over around 15 minutes as a pure piece of cinema you realise this is no mere fanciful film.

There is a dark undercurrent of obsession that runs throughout the film, the dedication to art to the point where it is your life and gets in the way of every other aspect, ultimately pursued to a not always happy ending.

I really didn't expect to be as caught up in it as I was.

A Masterpiece.

9/10

I have this one on a watch list and you have made me want to watch it sooner than later.