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Re: films we just saw

Posted: Sat Mar 06, 2010 2:47 pm
by 42nd Street Freak
krispyg wrote:City Of Angels

As part of the film compromise in my house, for every film I choose my other half gets to choose something the next time. Not too bad untill you actually realise how different our tastes in films are.
Not the sort of film I would usually go out and watch but I have to say this was a nice film for us to both sit and watch together.

Plus it gives me an excuse to put The Horseman or Coffin Rock on next time :lol:
:lol: It's the price of love my friend...the price of love.

Re: films we just saw

Posted: Sat Mar 06, 2010 3:01 pm
by Maniacal
The Beyond, will remain one of my favoes for years to come :)

Re: films we just saw

Posted: Sat Mar 06, 2010 3:31 pm
by 42nd Street Freak
Maniacal wrote:The Beyond, will remain one of my favoes for years to come :)
Eccentric as all hell...but that gothic look, gory set-piece and wonderful atmosphere set-up save it.
You keep as a favourite for years to come mate!



"Inglorious Basterds"

Second viewing (after the cinema viewing) of QT's WW2 epic.
And once the false expectations were taken care of after the first viewing...I have to say I liked this even more than I did the first time.

Let us face it my friends. Let us face it....I can safely say the vast majority of people who went to see "IB" without any other feedback other than the pre-release hype and trailers were not expecting the film they got.

Yes indeed we thought it was going to be an OTT 'Guys on a Mission' war film, full of artistic craziness, hyper violence, spectacle and fluid dialogue we would all like to say at the time but never would because we would only think of it the next day....Basically, indeed, a QT style remake of the original "Inglorious Bastards".

Instead though we got a very unusual, down right eccentric , WW2 thriller with more drama than armour and with 'Guys on a Mission' who basically played second fiddle to a young woman when they weren't making a complete hash of their (duplicated no less) plan to wipe out Hitler and his boys.

Basically the film is a selection of individual scenes that only play as a whole at the end of them when that slender thread of a shared plotline snakes its way in and lasso's the end of each scene to pull it back into the herd.
But it works because QT is a master at time and plot manipulation and stunningly brave plot devices.
And who the hell expected the amount of subtitled dialogue we had! A brave thing to do. But not a pretentious one as this authentic dialogue set-up actually becomes essential as far as at least 2 sequences play out, where English would have made it all pointless.

The aforementioned 'montage' set-up also makes the extended running time flit along at a fair old lick and in no way does the film (especially after the first viewing, where we were all a bit thrown about what we were watching) feel like how long it is.
It also means that something new is being unveiled for us every 20 minutes or so, which keeps the interest up and the expectations high.

Everyone gives their all, no bad performance is to be seen (if Roth had not been Roth none of you moaning fuckers would have said a word...admit it. And if you thought Bad Pitt was bad you failed to grasp the basic make-up of the movie, in fact he gives a mini genius performance and you only have to look at his face and body language during the meet and greet at the movie premier to see that) with Mélanie Laurent (shockingly ignored by poncy critics) and Christoph Waltz truly shining.

The alternate history thing is still really weird even after you know about it...but in a way it cleverly ensures that (despite the dickwads, fucktards and general inbred pond dwellers that hang out in IMDB message boards may think) any insult to the real WW2 is avoided from the go.
It also opens up a rare thing indeed...An historical event covered like no other by previous films that is suddenly unexpected and intriguing.

The violence is rare, brief but amazingly brutal, the use of music is once again genius (how happy was I to hear Lalo's superlative "Kelly's Heroes" music? And Bowie has never been used to better effect) and the lack of that PC, limp wristed attitude to taking out your enemy in any way you can too, often seen in today's society in real life (and at its most self-destructive), is also tramped into the mud as 'all out war' is turned about straight into the faces of the Nazis.

Faults?
Hell, where I had them on first viewing I seem to not have them anymore!
The dual/unknown to each other assassination plots still seems a bit strange and still seems a bit clunky as far as drama goes, and how I wish the ending (Why QT!? WHY did you not do this!?) had involved an extra special full face Brad Pitt artwork instead of just the forehead thing we got.

Otherwise the mixture of cult fanboy masturbatory indulgence (Hugo muthafuckin Stiglitz??!) is as glorious and lovely, lovely as ever, the serious drama is well done and effective, the violence is suitably nasty and the 'extended montage' set-up and use of other soundtrack music is wonderful and creative.

Damn it! After first viewing I thought Qt had come back to form but not to his full form. After a second viewing I think he has indeed come back to full form and it makes me damn near sexually stimulated to finally realise that!

Re: films we just saw

Posted: Sat Mar 06, 2010 3:43 pm
by Rue-morgue Jay
ALICE IN WONDERLAND

I would say that this isn't tim butron's best film, nor is it as bad as 'planet of the apes'.

It's fun and the lead actress is very good. Johnny depp is fun as the mad hatter, but i wouldn't say the hatter is mad, he's broken. beyond damaged.

The scene stealers are helen carter as the red queen and stephen fry as the cheshire cat who is just awesome!

Anne hathaway actually looks and is quite insane as the white queen and the comparisons to british cook nigella lawson are accurate. Especially in one particular scene where she looks at the camera and i was actually scared!

This is middle of the road for burton and depp.

of their collaborations this is below par

sleepy hollow
edward scissorhands
ed wood
corpse bride- haven't seen all of it.
sweeney todd
alice in wonderland
charlie and the chocolate factory

Re: films we just saw

Posted: Mon Mar 08, 2010 5:56 pm
by krispyg
Well seeing as the curse of Frightfest has caught up with me yet again, it has given me a chance to catch up on some films...

Autumn

Sub-standard, p*ss poor zombie nonsense. Gave it the usual 20 minutes (the time I allow a film to capture me or not) and hit the delete button on my sky+ remote. Come on Zone Horror, you can do better than this...

Friday the 13th (remake)

I really wanted to like this as I am a massive F13 fan and think Jason Vorhees is probably the ultimate horror bad guy. I even liked the latter films, yes they were bad but they were watchable in a good way. But this is just a total abomination, it has no redeeming features whatsoever. The only character I had any empathy with was Clay who at least had a valid reason for being there. Words can not describe how much I hate what they have done with this film.

Vacancy

I picked this up on the cheap having never seen it before and I have to say it's alright. The premise of the film itself is quite promising but it doesn't quite deliver. I think The Strangers offered more shocks and was a much better film, this isn't terrible by any means but it's not great either. Still, it was £2 from CEX so I can't really complain.

Dumplings

This has been sat on my sky+ for ages so I thought i'd give it a go, thankfully prior to having my lunch! Far from being a horror, what it does do is create a story so f*cked up and disturbing that the storyline itself will scare you anyway. Nasty, grim, gruesome, sickening, stomach churning, if you have not seen this before I will not spoil it for you. What worked well for me is how it questions how far humanities obsession with youth and beauty will extend to, does it have any limits or boundries. And if the story of Dumplings is to be believed, then the answer is a resounding no.

Anyway i'm off back to my death bed... :mrgreen:

Re: films we just saw

Posted: Mon Mar 08, 2010 5:58 pm
by 42nd Street Freak
It's worth checking out "Vacancy 2", the prequel. Okay stuff and more nasty than the first film by quite a way.

Re: films we just saw

Posted: Mon Mar 08, 2010 7:18 pm
by django
Had another stay at home weekend, I watched Mean Machine, the Longest Yard, Death Wish 2, Gator, Smokey and the Bandit and Smokey and the Bandit 2. Great to see the Smokey and the Bandit movies again, haven't seen them since the 80's, I only watched them for a nostalgia trip but they're such a blast, haven't laughed so much at a movie for ages, love that Buford T Justice and Junior Justice!.

Re: films we just saw

Posted: Mon Mar 08, 2010 9:06 pm
by giles edwards
Vague spoilers for deeply generic genre film structure:

My issue with Vacancy was that it's the most perfunctory pictures I've ever seen. After a sharp, character-led set up -- the whole thing is nicely played by a rather bemused Luke Wilson and Kate Beckensale -- things just...happen. Couple is caught in the motel by an either terrifically miscast or knowingly-pantomime Frank Whalley; a mildly diverting chase ensues; salvation turns up only to be dispatched; mildly more exciting chase hapens; final confrontation; end.

That is literally it.

It also has the most startlingly weird final scene of any theatrical film in recent memory: 2 minutes of absurdly dramatic padding to get it over the 79 minute mark that has not pay off and no real point being there.

It reminds me most of those Warner Bothers DTV label pictures like Rest Stop (which I reviewed a few years ago in an old Gore In The Store column): harmless, decently made exploitation that does absolutely nothing new in terms of form, technique or content; horror films made for people who don't really watch a lot of horror films.

Nice frantic Herrmann-esque score by Paul Haslinger though.

Sort of interested to see what Vacancy 2 brings to the party.

Re: films we just saw

Posted: Mon Mar 08, 2010 9:10 pm
by giles edwards
This weekend end was a recapitulation of teenage years spent lurking in the aisles of the local independent video store:

Avenging Force
Out For Justice
Maniac Cop
Roadhouse


which, quite unexpectedly, ended up being finely sequenced run of 80s era facism-for-fun.

Re: films we just saw

Posted: Mon Mar 08, 2010 9:14 pm
by giles edwards
krispyg wrote: Dumplings

This has been sat on my sky+ for ages so I thought i'd give it a go, thankfully prior to having my lunch! Far from being a horror, what it does do is create a story so f*cked up and disturbing that the storyline itself will scare you anyway. Nasty, grim, gruesome, sickening, stomach churning, if you have not seen this before I will not spoil it for you. What worked well for me is how it questions how far humanities obsession with youth and beauty will extend to, does it have any limits or boundries. And if the story of Dumplings is to be believed, then the answer is a resounding no.
And so lovingly filmed! I've only seen the cut down version from Three: Extremes and that pushed me as far as I was willing to go; it managed to pretty successfully accomplish what Cronenberg at his dispassionate best is able to do so effortlessly.

Re: films we just saw

Posted: Tue Mar 09, 2010 5:53 am
by krispyg
42nd Street Freak wrote:It's worth checking out "Vacancy 2", the prequel. Okay stuff and more nasty than the first film by quite a way.
Thanks for the tip off :D

Re: films we just saw

Posted: Tue Mar 09, 2010 6:08 am
by krispyg
Severance

Take 7 office collegues, pack them off to Hungary for a team building weekend and throw into the mix a bunch of anti-war savages hell bent on revenge and you get Severance.

Chris Smith is a director whose work I find really good, first off with Creep which didn't bring anything special to the table but for me at least, created a scenario based on claustrophobia and fear of being trapped, working it's horror as being just as much about the surroundings that you find yourself trapped in (in the same way as The Descent did) just as much as what you are trapped down there with. Triangle I thought was a good film but I just didn't quite get it, that's not to say there was anything wrong with the film but it does need a rewatch to pick up on what I may have missed last time around. And Black Death does show some promise.

So this brings me back to Severance. Absolutely brilliantly written, lot's of humour, lot's of gore and a few gruesome deaths along the way. Star role for me was from Andy Nyman, who plays Gordon, the office geek, ever eager to please the boss. And Tim McInnerny as Richard, the office manager assigned to organising the events of the weekend plays a blinder, standing back from everything as it's all kicking off. However he does redeem himself later in the film in one glorious selfless act of self destruction.

I can't reccomend this enough, it gets the balance between scares and laughs just right and just as you think it may be relying too much on one or the other, something happens or a piece of dialogue comes along that breaks it all up.

I know I have said before that i don't really do mixing horror with comedy, my view being that if you have both in a film, one can water down the other but in the case of Severance this is just not the case.

If you have not seen this yet, go get it, think I paid £3.99 from HMV online, 1p less than Paranormal Ascendancy!

Re: films we just saw

Posted: Tue Mar 09, 2010 11:23 am
by 42nd Street Freak
Yeah..."Severance" was lots of fun. And again, Danny Dyer is actually very likeable and not a wideboy irritant.

I see it recently got caught up in it's own bit of (ifuckingronic given the recent news) Bulger/'ChildsPlay 3' arse water over some guy burnt alive while tied to a tree by some scumbags...seemed the scumbags blamed "Severance" instead of their fucking retard genes and chavtastic upbringing.

Re: films we just saw

Posted: Tue Mar 09, 2010 3:09 pm
by krispyg
Cabin Fever 2

Hmmmmmmmmmmm..... Not a patch on the original, pretty juvenile and childish, no characters that I cared about so not the best of starts.

Ok the arm chopping scene was pretty grim and infected body parts were a bit yucky to look at but overall this is not exactly a classic. I stayed the full distance and there are worse films out there but the original was a million times better than this.

And obviously the ending sets it up very nicely for Cabin Fever 3...

That said the animations were a nice touch and it's not all bad, just not brilliant.

Re: films we just saw

Posted: Wed Mar 10, 2010 2:16 pm
by Notts Pete
Watched Cabin Fever 2 with Gav the other night too.

I went in with low expectations and was actually pleasantly surprised.

I agree that the characters were all a bit weak - but I wasn't keen on anyone in the first one either. I really enjoyed the deputy in this one though, thought it was great the way he just ran away from all the problems he came across :)
Some of the humour was very teen-comedy, with people peeing in the punch-bowl etc. but, overall, I thought it was a lot of fun with some really well done fx - and (I think) not a digital effect in sight!
Grindy reckons that Ti West was kicked off this one. His name's still on the credits, so I'd be interested to know just how much was his work - I'm REALLY looking forward to his House of the Devil, that looks just my cup of tea.
And that random scene with the rabbit/mascot running into the wall totally cracked us up :)