What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[Sargento]

Watched

The Box

Last night

Richard "One Hit Wonder" Kelly tries again to reach the dizzying heights of his debut feature "Donnie Darko" with "The Box", but I am afraid he just tries to cram in too much to make it enjoyable! The premise I am sure is obvious to all ... you are given a box with a button on it, press the button and you become a millionaire. However, someone you don't know will die immediately. The film's first half hour or so are very promising, but then the story falls apart and ends with plot holes you could drive a tank through! After 2 hours, I seem to remember - Mars, a club foot, lightening, sound waves, nose bleeds and 'employers' ...... little else!!!

... Give it a miss guys! Not even the retro 70's look can't save it!

[sgt harry]

sargento you lucky you remember that much i just remember wondering what the hell just happened and where did the last 2 hours go [its hard to believe someone let him make that did they not read the script]

[re.form]

Night of the Creeps on VHS. I had to press the 'tracking' button in order to see Tom Atkins' face.

Now that's nostalgia....

[oaxaca]

Just watching Loose Cannons (Gene Hackman, Dan Ayckroyd) 80s comedy, its bloody hilarious!! Gene Hackman & John Thaw could have been transatlantic twins

[42ndStreetFreak]

"Forty Guns"

http://www.beardyfreak.com/rvforty.php

Samuel Fuller's bizarre Western mix of high camp and seriousness is certainly an experience.

A dated and generally dire song, which is sung actually onscreen by a character as he walks to the bathhouse (there's lots of manly bathing in the film), throws the viewer completely off not long after the ‘thundering horsemen’ credits have finished.
From then on this veiled take on the legend of Wyatt Earp and his brothers never fails to entertain and bewilder.

As the hard-ass gang leader/matriarch Jessica Drummond, Barbara Stanwyk is in full gay icon mode here with her man berating dialogue and attitude while dressed in her black clothes with her black cowboy hat pitched to the side to show off her blonde locks.
Stanwyk would eventually embrace full-on, predatory, psychotic, lesbianism in "Walk on the Wild Side", but here she's basically just a visual/aural flirtation with lesbianism as her character’s urges are very much Heterosexual (Fuller famously called the film "Forty Pricks", relating to the fact her character has slept with, and then cast aside, every one of her all-male gang!)

The cocked gun that breaks her cold heart down belongs to Barry Sullivan’s Wyatt Earp stand-in Griff Bonnell.
The scenes between Sullivan and Stanwyk are drippy and tiresome for the most part but they also contain some of the best camp dialogue and glorious sexual innuendo we would never want to be without.
While sitting at her massive dining table (more later) with Sullivan, Stanwyk suddenly holds out her open hand and says;
“Can I feel it”
A sly smile later and Sullivan slowly hands her his gun with the warning “Careful, it might go off in your face”.
Wonderfully unsubtle subtly.

The action is pretty nicely spaced and often packed with tension as Griff Bonnell takes on bad guys with his famous ‘walk‘, where he openly walks down a street towards his prey, while his brother Wes (Gene Barry, in a nicely cool and steel-eyed performance) covers him with his rifle.

Sullivan does not look tough enough for his legendary killer character at first (he has to work a damn sight harder to impress than Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef would, in a role that is often as cold and cynical as the ‘Spaghetti Western’ characters to come) but as the film goes on his hard attitude and tough dialogue delivery manage to create a character in Griff that does fit with the status he seemingly has.

The screenplay also manages to weave these interesting lead characters into a pretty complex plot of murder, corruption, changing mores and bounty hunting that opens up not only some interesting ‘thriller’ elements but also broadens the support characters as well.

Overall then the great, eccentric as hell, Sam Fuller has yet again gone against the Hollywood grain (the occasional, undiluted, moments of conventional romantic slush aside) to make a Western that’s part dark drama and part goodtime shootout entertainment and all wrapped up in mischievous high camp.

Lots of fun…Check it out.

[iluvdvds@Cult Labs]

Watched two very good films lately.

Adaptation - with Nicolas Cage. A very very good film, lots of comedy and interesting characters. Makes me think perhaps screenwriting is not the best job out there

Then watched the original Gone In 60 Seconds. Just like Mamma Mia! it lacked, almost completly, any form of narrative and the characters were about as thin as could be. But unlike Mamma Mia, this film is full of exploding cars, vehicals flying through the air, hundreds of police cars smashing and crashing. Oh, I luved it!

Has anyone seen The Junkman? The trailer looks pretty good!

[vincenzo]

Originally Posted by iluvdvds

But unlike Mamma Mia, this film is full of exploding cars, vehicals flying through the air, hundreds of police cars smashing and crashing.

You mean you missed the scene where a drunk & dope smoking Meryl Streep crashes her Reliant Robin into a police car while singing "I am the Dancing Queen, you f***ing b*****d"?

[pedromonkey]

@ sargento: you didn't like then....i really enjoyed it, a lot better than the abysmal SouthLand Tales...

Just watched the Awe-inspiring epic that is AVATAR, and i thought it was ****ing AWESOME...yes the story was unoriginal but it was made in an original way...****ing love Cameron and his king kong ego....

[James Morton]

Originally Posted by Sargento

Watched

The Box

Last night

Richard "One Hit Wonder" Kelly tries again to reach the dizzying heights of his debut feature "Donnie Darko" with "The Box", but I am afraid he just tries to cram in too much to make it enjoyable! The premise I am sure is obvious to all ... you are given a box with a button on it, press the button and you become a millionaire. However, someone you don't know will die immediately. The film's first half hour or so are very promising, but then the story falls apart and ends with plot holes you could drive a tank through! After 2 hours, I seem to remember - Mars, a club foot, lightening, sound waves, nose bleeds and 'employers' ...... little else!!!

... Give it a miss guys! Not even the retro 70's look can't save it!

Kelly isn't even a 'one hit wonder' as you say.
DONNIE DARKO was an overrated piece of crap and a mind **** as well.
Kelly, like Wes Anderson, Cameron Crowe, Paul WS Anderson, Steven Soderberg, Michael Bay, etc, are all just garbage directors.

[42ndStreetFreak]

"Cold Sweat" - 1970

One of Bronson's 'Euro wilderness' pictures he made before his career was sky-rocketed back on course in grand style, for the next decade or so, with "Death Wish".

"Cold Sweat" boasts a British director ("Bond" helm Terence Young, who Bronson would work with again a year later on the fun "Red Sun" and 2 years later on "The Valachi Papers") and a multinational cast that includes Brits (Bronson's ever present Wife Jill Ireland and the great James Mason) and Europeans (from the respectable Liv Ullman to cult movie regular Luigi Pistilli).

The first half (dominated by Bronson's kick-ass biceps) is intriguing and entertaining with the odd dose of violence.
The second half though gets slightly derailed by the overly messy, murkily handled, plot mechanics and although there are a lot of interesting moments of power play and exchange as one side gets the better of the other (the extended finale sees Mason, one of his henchman and Bronson all in differing positions of conflicting power at the same time) this does mean the screenplay really grinds to a halt as far as any plot progression goes.

The truly awful 'Southern' American accent that they foolishly have James Mason attempt does the film no favours either!
The rarely anything other than bad (though her bottom of the barrel performance in "Death Wish 2" was yet to come) Jill Ireland is typically grating here and only that genuine bubbly charm she had in her youth makes her bearable.
Liv Ullman does a pretty good job though and handles a later action scene well.

But a fine car/bike chase (that features some truly impressive driving skills though some wonderful and varied French locations), the odd moment of bloodshed and Bronson's tough as nails physical presence help things along nicely until the rather ho hum finale (that matter of factly dumps James Mason).
Not great, let down in places after the fine start, but worth a look.