films we just saw

[Notts Pete]

Sorry, forgot to mention that we watched Valhalla Rising last night.
I'm still not really sure what I made of it. It's really well photographed and they did quite a lot with an obviously limited budget. Mads looks really badass as 'One-Eye', with some of the best make-up I've seen in a long time.
I don't really know what I was expecting, but I did struggle a bit with the pacing and general lack of 'action'.
In the making-of featurette, Nicolas Winding Refn described his film as 'metaphysical sci-fi', so perhaps I was going at it from the wrong angle.

Certainly and interesting and worthwhile watch though.

[Grindhouse]

Robin Hood
Avoids all the previous styles and cliches of robin hood and ridleys film has done as much as possible to avoid them,so what we have is a pre legend robin hood or a prequel of sorts that ends as the legend begins,so whats with the accent,its hardly noticable during the film,and if your spending the movie focussing on that,that may spoil your enjoyment over all,its a fun action romp thats shot beautifully,better battle scenes than gladiator,ridley has assembled a great cast,mark addy as friar tuck,mark strong,kevin durand and russell crowe of course,it doesnt have fighting robots,its not a comic book adaptation,it doesnt have miley cyrus,what it does have is a 12A rating and families can go and see this and enjoy a great summer movie,roll on the second part which im far more looking forward to than sherlock holmes second installment.

[voor]

Four Lions at the Curzon Soho last night with Chris Morris Q&A alongside some members of the cast: Very good effort for a first film, Chris Morris's dark satire is both subversive and very very funny. Although the visuals still betray the man's roots in T.V. , there's great promise here for the future - perhaps the only lacking elements was behind the motivations of the main character of the piece - other than this terrific set-pieces, some truly wonderful laugh-out-loud moments and oodles of dark, British humour. Certainly worth catching before it goes away.

[soberdave72@hotmail.com]

I would throughly recommend purchasing "Never Sleep Again - The Elm St Legacy" fantastic US import DVD. Not usually a fan of retrospectives or making offs, but this is something else. An epic 4 hr !! comprehensive look at all 8 original Elm street films, with nearly all of the casts interviewed at length. Englund is on top form, and the whole thing is narrated by Heather Langenkamp. Good fun seeing what the young casts look like now, and the section on Freddy's Revenge is particularly interesting. If you are a freddy fan, it is an essiential purchase.

[Melvin Junko]

Too busy watching stuff to do one of these posts so here's a quick rundown of the last 2.5 weeks.

The Howling 2 - loved this one, cheap, cheesy, silly, contains midget and werewolf orgies.

The Howling 3 - this was another good one, huge jumps in the story, lots of cheese and whack humour.

The Howling 4 - terrible, F-all happened. Waste of time.

The Slaughter - low budget indie demon/zombie stuff. Some good gore, nice looking ladies, a good effort with it's heart in the right place.

Red Room - Holy crap I wasn't ready for this when I watched it on a tuesday afternoon. Was expecting some standard J-gore but got so much more. Very sick and twisted and at times genuinly uncomfortable viewing. The whole 'lightbulb' stuff still makes my skin crawl.

Red Room 2 - more of the same and have the same impact on me as the 1st one. Manual removal of the fetus was classy though.

Wrath of silence - Hong Kong nasty comedy about a perverted killer. Hilariously bad subtitles. At some point in the finale when the sexmaniac tries to kill the 2 girls they keep shouting 'psychosis' at him. Made me chuckle.

Tomie 2 - 3 short stories about Tomie the girl that cannot die. Or dies and keeps coming back. Or whatever, expected a lot more from this.There's just not that much happening. Got 5 more parts laying around as well, but they'll probably go back to somewhere near the bottom of my to watch pile.

Gakidama - the demon within - Pretty cool 80's Japanese ghost/monster movie. Only lasts an hour but there's plenty of stuff happening. Cool crappy monster.

Crazy Safari - read about his one in 'Spooky encounters - a gwaillo guide to hong kong horror' and couldn't wait to see it. It is nuts! Lam Ching Ying and his buddy end up in Botswana with a hopping vampire and encounter a bunch of wild animals (including a very fake looking rhino haha), some badguys and a tribe of bushmen. Has the main character from The Gods must be crazy (which I really want to see now) in it as well. At one point Lam Ching Ying rides an ostrich with a rope tied around it's body with a guy parasailing! Crazy crazy stuff. Too bad the bushmen dialogue and the voiceover weren't subtitled.

Book Of Blood - pretty weak stuff. Won a copy of the dvd signed by Clive Barker in a competition, which was pretty cool but the actual movie was quite dissapointing.

Eastern Condors - Sammo Hung and Lam Ching Ying go Vietnam in a dirty dozen kind of way. Loads and loads of action. Good stuff.

The Guardian - seen bits of this when I was about 12, scared the crap out of me. really like this one. Good build up, good effects, pretty creepy in times.

Ganja-saurus rex - 80's stoner movie in which some hippies grow weedplants the size of redwood trees, which seem to attract the Ganjasaurus. extremely cheap special effects and a bit of a Fred Olen Ray feel to it with it's silly humour. Good fun.

Wolpodzilla - German short about aliens coming to earth to grow weed only to wake up a very bizarre looking creature that ends up going to the Octoberfests. Weird.

Who cares - The Duane Peters story - pretty good documentary about the good man. Focussed a bit too much on the skateboarding and not enough on the punkrock and drug abuse I thought, just still a good watch.

The Eternal evil of Asia - pretty sick Hong kong movie about a group of friends that meet a wizzard in Thailand, befriend him and then piss him off by gangbanging and accidently killing his sister (the were under a lovespell so not entirely their fault) Anyways, the wizzard ends up killing them one by one, and ends up making ghost love to one of the guys' girlfriend. Never seen a half nakedgirl felating an invisliby penis before, classy.

Zebraman - Miike Takashi family film. Very entertaining and still quite weird.

Ninja 3: the domination - an aerobics instuctor gets possessed my the ghost of a ninja and goes on a revenge fueled killing spree. Only Sho Kosugi can stop her. Awesome crappy fun.

Hidden Tiger - Billy Blanks has to fight till the death in some illegal tournament to save his trainer's granddaughter (who is a really annoying little shit). Pretty average stuff. He even uses the 'let the girl go, it's me you want' line.

Pantyhose hero - Hongkong action comedy, 2 cops go undercover and gays to bring down some crimelord. Very un-pc jokes with some good action scenes.

Vampire vs Vampire - Lam Ching Ying and his helpers fight a western style vampire with the help from a bunch of nuns and a little vampire kid. Whacky Asian horror comedy.

Bewitched - Shaw Brothers horror where a guy goes to Thailand, pisses off a local girl that he gets involved with and ends up cursed. A bit too long but some good magic battles.

Ultimate Vampire - another Lam Ching Ying vampire horror/comedy. Pretty good stuff.

The Forbidden Kingdom - had high expectations of this one. How can a movie with both Jackie Chan and Jet Li be dissapointing? one word: Hollywood. Some good fight scenes and beautiful locations but it got ruined by the annoying American teenager. Would have been so much better if it would have been a proper Chinese/Hong Kong production.

That was all, I need a little break from movies now

[rawshark]

Recent film viewing over the Bank Holiday weekend;

The Losers - Lived up to it's subtitle - The B Team. Not brilliant, not classic, but good fun and certainly fills the gap in the wait for The A Team. Chris Evans was good value and there's a lot of well-filmed action and stunts to echo it's comic book background.

Birdemic - brilliant, hilarious - loved every minute. Really MUST be seen on the big screen with a load of like-minded bad film enthusiasts, or at the very least at home with many friends, beer and coathangers! Loved the fact the director still thinks he's made a 'good' film, but hey, it has a heart (albeit overly pointed out throughout the film - global warming is bad!), so we'll forgive its shortcomings...

Never Sleep Again - perhaps a tad overlong, but thoroughly fascinating look at the making of the NOES franchise, courtesy of New Line (aka The House that Freddy built). Stuff on the original film is great, as is the parts concerning New Nightmares, but perhaps it lingers slightly too long on the other films in the series...

Punishment Park - Criminally underseen classic from 1971. Filmed in a mockumentary style, the film follows the trials of two groups of American dissenters and what actually happens when the accused choose 'punishment park' over a prison sentence. Remarkably prescient to today's social environment, this is fascinating and hugely though-provoking stuff - definitely worth hunting out.

The Hidden - Silly, but fun, 80s horror with Kyle Maclachlan and lots of Ferraris. The first mouth transference of the alien is brilliant, and the film engages (mostly) allthe way through to its climactic flame-thrower ending.

The Age of Assassins - Courtesy of Alex Kidd and Voor's Duke Mitchell club, this 1960s Japanese spy caper is good fun and very stylish. A little slow to begin with, but any film that features madcap spy adventures, nazi criminals and jeeps covered with camouflage bushes is ok with me.

[Maniacal]

After waiting nearly a year to see La Horde, I'm glad i waited (kind of had to ¬_¬). It's just entertaining, funny and gory as it was last August, grand film!

[Notts Pete]

[quote="rawshark"]Recent film viewing over the Bank Holiday weekend;



Birdemic - brilliant, hilarious - loved every minute. Really MUST be seen on the big screen with a load of like-minded bad film enthusiasts, or at the very least at home with many friends, beer and coathangers! Loved the fact the director still thinks he's made a 'good' film, but hey, it has a heart (albeit overly pointed out throughout the film - global warming is bad!), so we'll forgive its shortcomings...


Sorry, I've got to ask ... what's this thing about the 'coathangers' - that's both you and Kimblebee mentioned it? We're off to a midinght screening tomorrow night, should we turn up 'armed'? Wire or plastic? Would sneaking a ruck-sack full of pigeons from the Market Square in to release during the film be considered cruel? (We wouldn't make them watch the film
Just a few questions that we need answering ...

[kimblebee]

Not to give it away or anything but the coathangers in this film are rather like the spoons in The Room - I'm sure they will be giving them out at the screening (like they did at the screening we went to!) ) So fear not, you will find out what they are for, soon enough! )

[Notts Pete]

Thanks for that Kimblebee

Should be a fun night. It looks like Dee and Jay will be enjoying it on Saturday night at the Fantastic Films Festival in Bradford. It seems to be playing EVERYWHERE at one time or another.

I'm now fully prepared for the avian onslaught ....

[Grindhouse]

i caught up with Moon a few weeks back superb sci fi movie,with another great performance from Sam Rockwell.
Hellnight
this early 80s teen horror with Linda Blair holds up well,with some great scares and chilling scenes,not as gory as most early 80s horrors but worth a watch.
the haunted world of el superbeasto
i couldnt help be reminded of the excellent 90s cartoon earth worm jim while watching this,and those crazy 70s cartoons like jungle burger and fritz the cat,lots of fun and completely nuts.

[Maniacal]

The Land Before Time

ops:

[kimblebee]

Went to see The Killer Inside Me at the weekend. I found the violence to be quite difficult to watch at times but it was not as bad as I'd expected from the hype surrounding the film (although it will be an incredibly tough watch for a mainstream audience). Great performances from Kate Hudson and Jessica Alba - it's good to see both of them take on more challenging roles than the usual vacuous comedy types...

Although Casey Affleck put in a really good performance, I really struggle to see him as a leading man - his voice was difficult to understand for most of the film (unusually high pitched), but he did pull off the 'unhinged' act rather well.

The only let down for me was that it was rather slow at times, and as Mike (rawshark) pointed out to me when we were watching it, you can tell it was based on a novel as it plays out very much like one...

[soulmining]

Spot on Kim, I totally agree with everything you just said about The Killer Inside Me! For all the talk about the violence directed at Jessica Alba's character, I think the violence meted out towards Kate Hudson's character is just as upsetting.

Last night I saw The Collector, from the guys who wrote all the last three Saw films and all three Feast films. I think it's been out on DVD in the US for a month or two already but it's getting a theatrical release here later this month... and what's more, it's an 18 cert. film. Refreshing to see something that's not aimed at kids and isn't a sequel/remake. Anyway, I really liked it - it's pacy, and full of gruesome action. Home Alone for the Saw generation, if you like.

[kimblebee]

Ooh, The Collector sounds like my kinda film will definitely have to see that!