films we just saw

Chat here about anything horror related. Be it movies, news, remakes or events.
Dr. Rick Daglass
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Post by Dr. Rick Daglass »

Saw No Country for Old Men over the weekend at a preview. Bloody hell! Talk about finding your mojo, the Coen's have delivered their best film since... f**k it, maybe their best film full stop! Perfect performances, shocking scenes of violence and Brolin proving himself to be real bad ass. I can't wait to see it again.
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Team Banzai
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Post by Team Banzai »

agreed with no country.. kinda on the coen's theme i just caught up with sidney lumet's BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU'RE DEAD which is a bit like a simple plan 2 mixed with some coen bros lite.

the sum total of the film is less than it's parts but it does have some nice performances from philip seymour hofffman, ethan hawke and a surprisingly fequently naked marisa tomei.

the music by carter burwell is a delight if more than a shade repetitive.

file under to watch... but maybe on a home screen.

looking forward to cloverfield on thursday -although it apparently runs a brisk 70 odd minutes..!?
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Post by Bearded Avenger »

Team Banzai wrote:but not a patch on the great and hilarious teen comedy HAROLD AND KUMAR.
Trust that you are looking forward to HAROLD AND KUMAR ESCAPE FROM GUANTANOMO BAY.

Myself, just watched:

HORROR RISES FROM THE GRAVE - a Paul Naschy classic (well that's what the extras tell me;). Pretty enjoyable Hammer-esque Spannish horror. I just hate plotholes and this film annoyed me because it expected the viewer to accept that 1970's France had no cars or telephones, but plenty of lynch mobs.

SPERMBIRDS: ME AND MY FRIENDS - double DVD featuring a documentary on and 20th anniversary gig by the all time great German HC punk band. Watched it about 5 times now. 'My God Rides a Skateboard', 'Nothing Is Easy', 'Try Again', 'Get on the Stage', 'You're Not a Punk' - all the classic that anyone with a superior tatse in music will recognise.

BROTHERS - not the Danish film, but Swedish thriller based on Henning Mankell's Inspector Wallender series of novels. One bit of gore involving an unwise dive in front of a tank.

I watched another Wallender films but can't remember what it was called.
giles edwards
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Post by giles edwards »

This weekend was a blinder:

In A Lonely Place -- Nicholas Ray's crushingly powerful tragic noir with Bogart in full force brilliance opposite ex-wife Gloria Grahame. Classic studio filmmaking.

The Getaway -- light Peckinpah is still rollicking good cinema and this one doesn't disappoint. A viciously bastardish Al Lettieri, fresh from the same year's Godfather is a brilliant villain while McQueen proceeds to be McQueen and host of character actors round out a delightful supporting cast. Slight, but grand none the less. Great editing too.

Bedlam -- a dour, very serious minded piece of social horror from producer Val Lewton and director Mark Robson, this looks at the corruption rife in and around the infamous mental asylum and features a wonderful turn by Boris Karloff as Simms, the asylum's insidious trustee.

The Red House -- Delmer Daves is one of cinema's unsung masters and made this very potent psychological rural-noir just after the war. Edward G. Robinson puts his ambiguous nature to good use in tale of deception and madness with a spectacularly eerie early sequence set in a "haunted" (or is it ?) forest. The less you know the better going in, but it's readily rewarding stuff.

Don't Torture A Duckling -- I can't get this Riz Ortolani score out of my head. One of the most insanely memorable Italian scores I've heard (and quite plainly from the pen of the man that gave the world "More" from Mondo Cane). The 'Love Theme', used during one of the most stunning sequences I've ever seen in a film, let alone an Italian exploitation picture, when Florinda Bolkan is the subject of a literal witch hunt, is exquisite.

An unexpected surprise this, a Fulci I'd put of for various reasons and I'm so very glad I did. I'd forgotten the joy of discovering an outright genre classic, and this is most assuredly one. Modest, un-showy and rather languidly paced, true, it's none the less a peak in Fulci's career, alongside his apocalypse/zombie trilogy and Four Of The Apocalypse.

And that song laid alongside those images at 1' 04'' -- simply heartbreakingly powerful stuff.
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Mad Max
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Post by Mad Max »

Saw Cloverfield last night......loved it! despite the super strict security...love those infa red goggles!
voor
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Post by voor »

Just reading your weekend Giles - that's a good line-up!

Talking about Bedlam, did you see the Val Lewton Collection they released in America? It has to be one of the most beautiful packages I've ever purchased , the care that obviously went into is something else! And to watch them all back to back in such glory with some brilliant commentaries (including our own Kim Newman and someone else great whose name just eludes me) - pure heaven!

Also Getaway - used to love it until I got into Jim Thompson. Peckinpah os THE director for the material but why water it down? The book's nihilistic, killer style married with simply one the best/worst endings ever, tbe film fades a litte next to it all.

Gotta love Red House, In A Lonely Place and Don't Torture A Duckling, too. Especially that last hone call in In A Lonely Place which simply comes too little, too late.

Over the last two days I watched Last House In The Woods and Michele Soavi's comeback Arrivederci Amore, Ciao. And both were very good in their own way. Last HOuse In The Woods is obviously an homage and however idiotic it got, I stil lhad to love it with all the gore and that synthetic score.
Michele Soavi Arriverderci Amore, Ciao is just awesome, just a bleak, dark film - almost noir in its' aproach. It's so good to see this master do what he does best - toy with human nature in ways we could otherwise never imagine.

Voor
giles edwards
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Post by giles edwards »

Hey Voor, yeah a pretty wild few hours viewing. the wife was away film-festivalling so I get to indulge in a bit of a marathon.

Indeed, I've made my way through that delicious Val Lewton box and Bedlam was one of the last titles to get to. It's a crying shame that the DVD market in the UK probably isn't bouyant enough to justify the cost of producing a Region 2 version. It's simply one the favourite releases of my of my collection. I think the commentary is with Steve Jones? He wrote the excellent Monster Guide and did a bunch of great commentaries for Sanctury's UK DVD releases of Halloween II, Halloween III: Season Of The Witch and The Dead Zone with Kim.

I have The Getaway novel in my to read pile. I've heard the last chapter is killer.

In A Lonely Place does what I wish my other favourite Bogart picture, Dark Passage, would have done -- leave that ending hanging. A real gut punch. Delmer Daves kind of sweetens Dark Passage too much but Ray gets it just right with this picture.

I actually have Last House In The Woods -- I watched the first 1/2 hour but the acting style was so shrill I thought I was watching an Andreas Schnaas picture, so I opted out. But if it gets the 80s nostalgia buzz working later on, I'll give it another shot.

I'd love to see the new Soavi -- though I'd settle for Stagefright, Dellamorte Dellamore and The Church & The Sect getting some kind of decent release here. I know Alan has written i the past of the rather troubling few years this masterful artist has had. Here's hoping he's coming back with a vengeance and here to stay once more.
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voor
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Post by voor »

Actually I realised the commentary I mean was with Robert Wise - I just love hearing him talk. Though Steve Jones's one is very good, too!

Ray always has that sucker-punch somewhere though - I always refer people to 'Bigger Than Life' with the undeniably brilliant James Mason's central portrayal of schoolteacher cracking, supposedly because of drugs. Within the confienemtn of the system, he makes the whole thing so creepy, so double-edge that when the "happy"" ending comes, the only person fooled is the studios. I remember seeing Loneply Place and Bigger than life in a double bill at the Riverside Sutdios a few years back - oh boy was that a kick in the nuts!

It's always good to see someone old-school come up with something so good - the recent Sidney Lumet being another fine example - it revitalises my faith in cinema.

Any Jim Thompson last chapter is a killer - he's like M. Night Shyamalan wants to be but can never reach - he always has something up his sleeve, not necessarily twist but some sort of emotional assault - a final salvo before you can put the book down and attempt to return to your comfortable existence which never fails to work - even in his lesser work he manages to create an uncomfortable, alternative existence wherein everything from reality is distorted through some sort of grotesque character mirror and becomes uncomfortable crystallised.

Last night I watched (again, for the sake of my other half) the excellent little-known hammer thriller 'Hysteria' written by jimmy Sangster and directed by Freddie Francis. A totally unHammer Hammer film, it apes succesfuly the style of its' American counterparts at the time. A wooden lead by Robert Webster does not help but some good , solid Brtiish players (ie Maurice Denham) carry the story along ploddingly to an ejoyable and very acceptable conclusion.
Afterwards - a double bill of 'Class Of 1984' and 'The Serpent's Tale' - forgotten how good Class was - pure 80's trash but such good, fun, violent, unforgettable 80's trash - had to switch to 'The Serpent's Tale' near the end but will watch it this weekend again to remember what I had forgotten. 'The Serpent's Tale' is a weird and very cool horror film from Turkey circa 1995. directed by Kutlugh Ataman and incorporating vampires, Americans and a scroll that grants immortality into a web of intrigue within an ancient family, the film reminded me of a lot of the Italian classics like 'Eyes In The Labyrinth' or 'The Beyond' - very recommened but do not try to make sense of the plot otherwise you'll be left stranded.
And for those with cable - 26th January is Vincent Price night on Zone Horror. 21.00 Dr.Phibes 22.50 Dr. Phibes Rises Again 00.50 Scream And Scrsm Again 02.50 Tales Of Terror - you have no excuses not to watch -

Sincerely yours

Voor[/i]
giles edwards
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Post by giles edwards »

How I wish I had cable -- though I do have all those on various forms of physical media, even that funny old VHS thing. Have to persuade Rattray/MAcEvoy/Jones to get The Abominable Dr Phibes on the big screen one of these years - it'd be sensational.

Is that Sangster picture in the Universal Hammer Legacy thing they released a couple years back with Brides Of Dracula and Phantom Of The Opera in it ? I know the set I have has Paranoiac in there. I'm guessing the entire run of those Hammer psychological thrillers were just riffs on the same Les Diaboliques-style gimmicks? But what style, eh? What style.

The only Turkish exploitation picture I've seen is Turkish Superman -- but if that's anything to go by, I'd lap more up in an instant!
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voor
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Post by voor »

No, no , that's Nightmare - to be honest I haven't seen Hysteria re-issued- it seems to get aired at random interval at TCM at very late night - like Night Walker that wird Roald Dahl film with his wife in the lead after she had recovered from a stroke/paralysis - well worth tracking down though- the funny thing being no diabolique style twist! - yep , none, the story does twist but far as twists go , it's so very much straightforward that you will not believe it. also noticeable becuase Rotbert Webber's lead characters is a bit if a ahem bastard. No question about style, the whole thing screams angles, sharp edges, mad camerawork but also an awesome jazz score and one of the most inventive credit/title sequences I've seen a while. (though I loved recentlly Juno's title sequence as well)

The Serpent's Tale is a different kind of exploitation - not head inducing awfulness but a weirndess that comes closer to Avati stuff (ie Zeder)

Well worth tracking down if you can

voor
giles edwards
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Post by giles edwards »

I love Avati (and Zeder espcially). Lots to get tracking on! Gracias.
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streetrw
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Post by streetrw »

Okay, I finally got round to seeing I Am Legend at the weekend and it's.... well, tolerable; really a disappointment. I loved the opening sequences of a deserted New York but it isn't a fraction as interesting as the wonderful The Omega Man. Maybe not being much of a Will Smith fan didn't help either; and I couldn't take the shop-window dummy stuff which suggested that Smith might actually be going mad - which I'll admit would hardly be surprising, given the inevitable loneliness.

Meanwhile on DVD: I was pleasantly surprised by Thr3e, a psycho puzzle-setting mastermind yarn and yet another in the long list of films that include digits in the title (Se7en, 5ive Girls, Thir13en Ghosts, 2001: A Space Odyssey) which pulls a nice twist in the third act that I completely failed to see coming.

A couple of older movies have shown up this week: I really enjoyed Brian DePalma's 1974 blend of Faust and Leroux: Phantom of the Paradise, which I'd never seen before. This is more of a comedy-horror (ugh) than a horror movie, although there's a Psycho gag in there as well, and a long split-screen sequence that's textbook BDP. What a crying shame we're not getting movies of this quality these days: quirky, individual, stylish, and not ironed into homogenous mush by dollar-obsessed executive idiots.

Some time ago, around 15 years ago, I Was There at the Scala when Chow Yun-Fat, by common consent The Coolest Man In The World, took the stage to tumultuous, deafening acclaim. The Killer, three Better Tomorrow movies, Hard Boiled, God of Gamblers.... One of CYF's films that I never managed to see was 1989's Tiger On The Beat, not so much the kind of Heroic Bloodshed movie that audience loved and applauded him for, but more a generic cops-vs-gangsters action comedy. The comedy stuff is not very good - there's a lot of mugging going on and neither maverick cop Chow or new partner Conan Lee are particularly interesting characters. And the action stuff is pretty perfunctory and doesn't have the zip and panache (or the armies of stuntmen ready to cripple themselves in the name of art) of either the Jackie Chan or John Woo schools of mayhem, although there's a nifty chainsaw duel that livens up the third act enormously.

Two pages back I mentioned Boo, which I did rather like - there's almost exactly the same plot and setting in Death Tunnel, which is hideous. Five girls spend the night in an abandoned (and haunted) hospital. This time around it's so overedited and over-stylised that it's a complete mess; at times it's like the title sequence to Se7en expanded to feature length. Allegedly inspired by true events.

Worse is Hoboken Hollow, a dull, pointless catalogue of indignity, brutality, rape, torture and murder with a boring lead (Jason Connery) who does nothing even remotely heroic from start to finish; cameo appearances from Dennis Hopper and Michael Madsen, and an inappropriately chummy voiceover that sounds like it's wandered in from an old episode of The Dukes Of Hazzard. Allegedly inspired by true events; though more believable than Death Tunnel. But seeing both films on the same evening - why do I keep doing this to myself? Is it a cry for help? Is it a means of shutting out the loneliness and misery for 180 minutes? Have I got nothing better to do with a free evening and change from a fiver?
James W
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Post by James W »

Rob Zombie's Halloween - Directors Cut: bloody hell, how crap?
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Team Banzai
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Post by Team Banzai »

CLOVERFIELD not too spoilery!
well after all the hype we finally got to see the film - after a chance meeting with FF regulars Tabitha and Rachael who were quickly persuaded to come along with us to see the screening instead of the musical they had tickets for.
so the ten strong FF posse ended up pretty much on the front row of the Empire for the much awaited film. would it live up to all the pre-release promotion..? the answer is yes and no.
after about 15-20 minutes of badly filmed (intentionally obviously) party waffling the creature attacks and the rollercoaster ride begins. what impresses most about the film is the sound design, on the empire's admittedly huge screen the beast, helicopters, planes and building toppling literally punch you in the stomach. i'm guessing that a lot was spent on the sound as the visuals, owing to the concept are lacking. lots of good set-pieces, but there are a few which are a shade under-developed. it was however nice to see the creature quite clearly as they could have kept it hidden a la blair witch. like that film i think this will be a love it or loathe it experience.
so, fully recommended then (if only to have an opinion on it - it's a must see) but not as effective as REC.
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Post by ghouldrool »

AVP-R

A slasher movie at heart. Shaky cam and close up once more ruin action scenes.

The characters are surprisingly well delivered considering most only get a couple of scenes before they are wiped out. There is one death that did actually shock me

Theres a particularly nasty evolution of the Alien life cycle too. For some it might just push the envelope a little too far.

We dont see the PredAlien much and when he or she is there you can hardly see it anyway.

Its a good solid little B flick marred by the fight scenes being too hard to follow and a last 5 mins ripped from a resident evil title.
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