|
Post by Steve on Feb 15, 2015 6:28:17 GMT -5
The Skeleton Key. Dreadful!
|
|
|
Post by HeisenDude on Feb 15, 2015 14:53:57 GMT -5
I watched Grand Budapest Hotel on HBO. It's hysterical, if you are into artsy comedy, which I am.
|
|
|
Post by Hey Man on Feb 15, 2015 21:23:04 GMT -5
Edge Of Tomorrow is a fantastic action film.
|
|
|
Post by lugnut on Feb 18, 2015 17:09:46 GMT -5
Card Subject to Change (2010) - Good documentary on an independent wrestling league (NWS out of New Jersey, apparently now defunct) and the general scene of newcomers, wannabes, and old stars on their way down. Generally as depressing as these things usually are - nothing good happens to anyone featured save for one guy who made it to the Ring of Honor league - but good stuff even for non-fans like myself.
Star 80 (1983) - Pretty good flick on Dorothy Stratten, murdered Playmate of the Year, though really more about Eric Roberts' deranged performance as her skeezy boyfriend. Somehow it feels both a little overblown and a little flimsy, but Roberts is great and even Mariel Hemingway does as good as anyone could ask for in the role. Wonder what ever happened to that nifty SL Mercedes with the titular license plate...
Wild Style (1983) - The plot is almost non-existent, the acting is even worse, and none of it matters. The reason to watch this is to see the birth of hip-hop in its home setting, captured on film along with the burnt-out hellscape that was the Bronx in 1982. Great music here, great graffiti artwork to gawk at, just ignore everything else. (And seriously, how have I spent basically my entire life as a hip-hop fan without ever actually seeing this until now?)
Predator 2 (1990) - I hadn't seen this since it was new. I hated it at the time. Looking at it now, I'm not sure why - this has just about everything a dumb kid could want, really. Yeah, it's stupid, but would you want it any other way? (And god knows it's a million times better than Alien vs. Predator...)
|
|
|
Post by lugnut on Feb 21, 2015 2:58:10 GMT -5
League of Denial: The NFL's Concussion Crisis (2013) - Yet again I find myself interested by a sports documentary when I don't care about the sport at all. Very interesting, if perhaps a tad overlong, look at the NFL's myriad claims of innocence despite being faced with all sorts of evidence all but proving a strong link between football and serious brain disease. Originally a PBS Frontline episode, probably streaming for free on their site/channel but also on Netflix.
A Life in Dirty Movies (2014) - Neat doc about Joe Sarno, a softcore-porno filmmaker in the '60s and '70s who was more influenced by Bergman than Playboy. Mainly about the relationship between he and his wife in what turns out to be his final days, but also a cool look at how the "sex film" industry switched from the kind of movies he made and the hardcore stuff that started dominating in the mid-'70s.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) - Everytime I see this I feel like I'm seeing the movie anew again. I rented god knows how many different VHS versions back in the day and all of them were nearly unwatchable, from way-too-dark and way-too-beat-up prints. When the first Pioneer DVD came out around '99 or 2000 I bought that and felt like I'd finally seen the movie. Today I noticed Showtime Anytime had it up for streaming, but expiring on 2/24, so figured why not - and it turns out this one is the new 1080p Blu-Ray restoration, which makes that old DVD look almost as bad as those VHS copies. As for the flick itself, what can you say? Still great.
Bustin' Loose (1981) - A family film with an inexplicable R rating (one too many fucks or goddamns? Even though a year earlier Airplane! got a PG with at least two bare-titty gags?). Not bad, but as slight as you remember, though there are a handful of pretty funny bits here and there. And then there's that interesting scene where Richard Pryor time-travels to the future to steal a flatscreen TV... (Can't find a picture, but I seriously had to go back and rewind to make sure I hadn't lost my mind. Turned out it's some Advent VideoBeam front-projection unit which I've never, ever seen before.)
|
|
|
Post by R&ROVER on Feb 21, 2015 8:51:43 GMT -5
Boyhood and Inside Llewyn Davis
|
|
|
Post by Hey Man on Feb 21, 2015 13:38:30 GMT -5
Boyhood and Inside Llewyn Davis And? Did you like em?
|
|
|
Post by R&ROVER on Feb 21, 2015 15:52:01 GMT -5
I did. I thought Boyhood was great. Not a lot of plot, but a wonderful modern coming of age slice of life film with a kid I didn't hate. (I'm biased...his 18 year old self looks and acts almost identically with my son Jaxon. It's downright eerie). Linklater is simply a master of this style of filmmaking and story telling. Mark my words, his films will be Capra-esque type classics in 30 years.
Also dug Inside Llewyn Davis. While a lot of folks much prefer the Coen Broa films of old, I'm actually really fond of their more recent works. (I love Fargo and some others too, but I actually think they're getting better with time and age(.
|
|
|
Post by Hey Man on Feb 21, 2015 16:03:31 GMT -5
I did. I thought Boyhood was great. Not a lot of plot, but a wonderful modern coming of age slice of life film with a kid I didn't hate. (I'm biased...his 18 year old self looks and acts almost identically with my son Jaxon. It's downright eerie). Linklater is simply a master of this style of filmmaking and story telling. Mark my words, his films will be Capra-esque type classics in 30 years. Also dug Inside Llewyn Davis. While a lot of folks much prefer the Coen Broa films of old, I'm actually really fond of their more recent works. (I love Fargo and some others too, but I actually think they're getting better with time and age(. Do you think Boyhood is Best Picture material?
|
|
|
Post by R&ROVER on Feb 21, 2015 16:14:56 GMT -5
I think it represents a neat idea in filmmaking at least....and it's a great example of the kind of film that it is. So...yes.
|
|
|
Post by Steve on Feb 24, 2015 8:36:46 GMT -5
The Forgotten- or perhaps Best Forgotten. Why did I ever want to see this? It's like someone put a bad X-Files and an even worse Twilight Zone in the oven together, cooked it for half as long as necessary, ate the result and then crapped it out.
Normally when I watch a bad flick, I amuse myself by thinking how I could have written it better. This time I was lost.
|
|
|
Post by Vandelay Industries on Feb 24, 2015 20:17:24 GMT -5
Watched 'edge of tomorrow' this evening. Much better than I expected. Whoever was in charge of promoting this movie oughta be shot in the face. And emily blunt is a badass...
|
|
|
Post by I'm Almost Human on Mar 5, 2015 9:56:43 GMT -5
All This Mayhem - The story of the Pappas brothers, two prominent figures in the rise of vert skateboarding. This was actually a really solid documentary about how crazy of a path these two ended up going down. Pretty sad and shocking.
The Last Gladiators - Another documentary, this one is on the topic of NHL enforcers, specifically legendary Canadiens tough guy Chris Nilan. I really enjoyed this one, it really shows just how hard of a time these guys have post NHL careers. Another depressing story.
Big Shot - Kevin Connolly made this one, focuses on John Spano, the guy who bought the Islanders in the 90s and turned out being a fraud. Yet another crazy story. Spano just seems like a really creepy, sleazy guy. Connolly did a good job on this one.
|
|
|
Post by HeisenDude on Mar 6, 2015 0:20:12 GMT -5
Birdman, and it is fantastic.
|
|
|
Post by HeisenDude on Mar 6, 2015 0:22:33 GMT -5
I did. I thought Boyhood was great. Not a lot of plot, but a wonderful modern coming of age slice of life film with a kid I didn't hate. (I'm biased...his 18 year old self looks and acts almost identically with my son Jaxon. It's downright eerie). Linklater is simply a master of this style of filmmaking and story telling. Mark my words, his films will be Capra-esque type classics in 30 years. Also dug Inside Llewyn Davis. While a lot of folks much prefer the Coen Broa films of old, I'm actually really fond of their more recent works. (I love Fargo and some others too, but I actually think they're getting better with time and age(. Inside Llewyn Davis was a very good movie. I got high with my girl and saw it at a restored theatre from the mid 19th Century. A perfect setting.
|
|
|
Post by lugnut on Mar 9, 2015 10:04:33 GMT -5
Fruitvale Station (2013) - Good god, this is boring. 94% or maybe higher at RottenTomatoes and I've heard lots of praise from just "normal people" too, but I don't get it. A true story based on the life of Oscar Grant, yet another young unarmed black man killed by police for no particular reason. The thing is, there's some very compelling scenes towards the beginning and at the end, there's just the matter of the hour in the middle where you might as well watch paint dry. At least at 85 minutes it's short enough for the good bits to still overpower the bad, but not by much.
Quiet Riot: Well Now You're Here, There's No Way Back (2014) - Mentioned some of my thoughts briefly in HM's thread for the movie, but definitely worth a look. It really often comes off more like The Frankie Banali Story than anything else, though. And though I mentioned my thoughts on how Mark Huff seems to have been treated, what was the deal with the guy who came after (whose name I now forget) who seemed perfect in both voice and stage presence being fired in favor of Jizzy fucking Pearl? Is Banali just impossible to work with in general? (I know dick about QR outside of the first album and I haven't even heard that in well over 20 years.)
The Bee Gees: One Night Only (1997) - Damn, this is a fantastic concert flick. I've not known much about them aside from the big hits really, and all of those are here of course, from the '60s stuff on up, and some pretty great stuff I wasn't particularly familiar with or hadn't heard at all, too. It's amazing how good these guys sounded this late in the game - quite arguably better than the live performances from their '70s heyday that I've seen/heard. (And man, is it just me or are there a lot of vaguely country-sounding influences in a lot of those pre-disco-years tunes that I never really noticed before somehow? No wonder Barry wound up writing for Dolly Parton...)
A Good Day to Die (2010) - Great documentary focused mainly on leader Dennis Banks, but really about the American Indian Movement in general and the goals and achievements the movement brought on. Excellent watch if one has any connection to Native American roots at all, but probably of interest to really anyone interested in modern activism and civil rights fights. The movement didn't last long, but it's hard to deny the impact it ultimately had on the treatment of Indian peoples.
Genius on Hold (2013) - Kind of all-over-the-place documentary about a man named Walter Shaw, who invented many of the telecommunication breakthroughs still in use today, but was essentially robbed of both his creations and any chance to profit from them by the AT&T / Bell conglomerate in its monopoly days. The movie kinda wants to stuff in a little too much about the dangers of monopolies and government collusion with big business in general, but an interesting watch nonetheless.
Like Father, Like Son (1987) - The Dudley Moore/Kirk Cameron epic about a stuffy parent and his idiot teenage son who wind up switching bodies for a few days and learn to love and understand each other more after a few days of wacky hijinx. See, this is what happens when the batteries in your remote die but you're too lazy to go dig through drawers to see if you have any more, so you just settle for whatever pops up on TV. I saw this when it was new and had pretty much forgotten it entirely ever since, but... hell, y'know what, it ain't that bad as stupid '80s comedies go. Surprisingly great wall-to-wall soundtrack here - Ramones! Motley Crue! A whole concert performance scene from Autograph! And another reminder that I really did like Kirk Cameron as an actor at one time, before Jesus showed up and ruined it all. Who knows if he ever coulda translated well to adult roles anyway, but I always wonder "What if?" when I see him in stuff as a teenager.
|
|
|
Post by lugnut on Mar 10, 2015 20:37:49 GMT -5
Bad Georgia Road (1977) - B-Movie trash with a surprising ugly streak about a stuck-up New York bitch who inherits what she expects to be a beautiful Southern plantation only to find she owns a shithole moonshine-running operation staffed by a crazy old man and a creepy asshole, who is our movie's hero, instead. Soon she decides to stay and exploit the business and dumb car chases and shit ensue. It's watchable for what it is, I guess.
Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) - I'd mentioned maybe going through all of John Carpenter's films for the hell of it in that other thread, so if I do, at least I've knocked the first one off. (Well, unless I hunt down Dark Star, that is, though Carpenter doesn't seem to count it.) I'd never seen this, somehow, but great stuff. Seems like the kind of movie that should have been running on afternoon or late night TV all the time back when I was a kid and other such disreputable action flicks ruled those time slots, but either it wasn't or I just missed it. Is the remake worth a shit?
Left Behind (2000) - Oh boy. So after I mentioned enjoying Kirk Cameron in stuff back when he was a teenager, I figured I'd actually see what one of his adult roles looked like. Netflix has this series and it seemed like it might be the most tolerable choice out of his selection of Jesus movies, so why not. And yeesh, this is pretty bad. And so is Kirk - but it's weird because for a kid who'd had as much charisma as he did, it went away overnight as soon as he went full Jesus towards the end of Growing Pains. Judging from this movie, it looks like he got even worse from there. I feel like there actually could be a good movie made about the Rapture story, probably even one that could work for both believers and those who could just look at it from a sci-fi angle, but this ain't it. The budget's too small to make the "chaos on earth" stuff look like anything, but this (being part of a trilogy, because of course it is) doesn't try to get too heavily into that part yet anyway. In classic conservative tradition, the U.N. represents the Antichrist and his followers. Surprisingly not quite as preachy as I expected, but when it brings it, it really lays it on thick. Fuck, I may have to look at part two now just to see how they get into the hell-on-earth stuff and how bad it looks. What's funny is I remember reading that last year's big-budget Nic Cage remake is even worse. [And pointless note I always feel compelled to make when I notice these on Netflix, but this is another one presented in open-matte 4x3 that should be 1.85:1 / 16x9 - zoom mode correctly crops it back where it should be.]
Dark Star (1974) - Well, fuck it, I guess I will watch all the Carpenter movies in order after all... Except for where I already fucked up on the order part, but whatever. Anyway, this one is...different. I sort of want to like it more than I actually did. I like its sense of humor, but large parts of it are just pretty damn dull - yet somehow I was never exactly bored. Some of the super-cheap "special effects" are actually still kinda cool-looking though, and I can't say I didn't like the movie necessarily, but... I dunno.
|
|
|
Post by Cducharme on Mar 10, 2015 22:20:47 GMT -5
The left behind books number over 11 last I knew, which was like 7 years ago. The first few books actually weren't bad for bible bullshit apocalyptic stories. Cameron wanted to adapt them all.
|
|
|
Post by lugnut on Mar 13, 2015 16:13:35 GMT -5
100 Bloody Acres (2012) - Quite good Aussie horror-comedy flick about a fertilizer company that accidentally finds itself stuck with a human body to dispose of, along with a handful of witnesses to try and figure out how to deal with. Lots of fun, definitely worth checking out.
Halloween (1978) - John Carpenter watch-em-all session continues even though I've seen this one a million times. I went for the "Extended Cut" version this time, the one with the extra 12 minutes of shot-as-TV-edit-filler scenes. I actually kinda prefer this cut though, even though the scenes weren't even filmed at the same time as the original movie was. The stuff with Loomis fleshes out the story between him and Michael nicely, and the other bits don't hurt anything. (And what weird foresight Carpenter had to shoot those extra scenes in 2.35:1 just like the theatrical version even though he knew it would be shown in 4x3 pan-n-scan on TV. They never turned up in that widescreen ratio until the 2001 DVD release of the extended cut, so why would he even think to spend the extra money to do it this way?) Anyway, great flick, no news there. I guess up next will be the first of his two TV movies that basically none of us had even heard of, which must have been shot right after this movie.
The Amityville Horror (1979) - So despite seeing a few of the 700 sequels along the way, I'd never seen the original film in full. Boy, this... this is not very good. How the fuck did this earn 86 million in US box office and become the 2nd-highest grossing film of the year? Let alone spawn a never-ending franchise? This seems like it woulda been a pretty generic, by-the-numbers haunted house flick even in its day. Reminds me of a TV movie throughout. Did the "based on a true story" gimmick really sell it that much? (Though I know the book had already been a success, too.) I did like that the ghost is also a petty thief that'll steal a dude's 1500 bucks for no apparent reason other than to be an asshole.
Friday the 13th (1980) - Because I am a living cliche, but mostly because I've had these movies on "rewatch list" forever since I haven't seen most of them in well over 20 years. This one I'd hardly seen at all because I found it boring as all hell as a kid for some reason, even though I knew going into it not to expect Jason. Watching it now, yeah, it's full of more soon-to-be-cliches than even the cliche of watching F13 movies on that day is, but it still works alright for what it is. Sort of surprising that this happened to be the one out of all the zillion post-Halloween imitators that caught on big, though. It's really nothing that special, even judged by others of its type from the same timeframe. Onto the sequels! Eventually! And I've never even seen Jason X at all!
|
|
|
Post by Cducharme on Mar 13, 2015 19:40:33 GMT -5
Wait. Never seen Jason X? The fuck?
Also, the carpenter tv films are very spotty
|
|
|
Post by Steve on Mar 14, 2015 1:47:56 GMT -5
Shelter. Dreadfully, inexcusably, Peter Criss level poor. Every horror cliche in the book done as badly as you can imagine with another ten suitcases full of bad thrown in for good measure. When will I learn not to watch anything with Julianne Moore in? The woman's made more shit than a brontosaurus with dysentry.
|
|
|
Post by lugnut on Mar 14, 2015 20:06:35 GMT -5
Wait. Never seen Jason X? The fuck? Somehow the "Jason... in space!" idea it was sold under at the time didn't exactly sound appealing. It was only later on that I heard the movie is basically a comedy, but yeah, still never got around to it.
|
|
|
Post by lugnut on Mar 15, 2015 3:47:05 GMT -5
BTW Cdu or anyone else, did you see 100 Bloody Acres? I wound up liking that a lot more than I thought I was going to and wondered why it seems to be pretty unknown.
|
|
|
Post by Cducharme on Mar 15, 2015 6:50:44 GMT -5
Not yet, been very distracted lately (kids'll do that)
|
|
|
Post by lugnut on Mar 18, 2015 16:32:21 GMT -5
Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films (2014) - Pretty good documentary on the titular subject, though nobody interviewed actually has much of anything particulary good to say about Cannon and its films for the most part. Still, fun watch for anyone with an interest. And now I must watch Invasion USA, because it looked pretty fucking awesome.
Black Sunday (aka The Mask of Satan) (1960) - Eh... well, there's still some cool SFX here, and I appreciate the visuals and the overall atmosphere of the thing, but this is pretty... what's the word? Hokey. Despite some unexpected-for-the-time gore, you never forget you're watching a (questionably dubbed) 55-year-old cheapo horror movie. I can't imagine the plot here being anything noteworthy even in 1960, this is pretty generic "evil witch" kinda stuff overall. Still, there's plenty of worse ways to waste 87 minutes.
The Alzheimers Project: The Memory Loss Tapes (2009) - Well this is fuckin' depressing. Follows seven different patients, each seemingly in worse shape than the last. I think I've said it before, but this seems like the one disease that would truly utterly terrify me, even more than cancer. Good watch, difficult stuff though.
|
|
|
Post by lugnut on Mar 20, 2015 3:19:35 GMT -5
Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981) - Y'know, it was about 20 minutes into this one that I realized I hadn't ever seen much more of this particular entry beyond those 20 minutes. There were three video stores in my tiny-ass town, but only one of them had this tape for some reason. Me and a buddy rented it one night and his VCR ate it somewhere around 20-30 minutes in, and the store never replaced it. So hey, technically almost a totally new F13 movie to watch, cool! ...But uh... I'm not getting all the love for this one. The body count is high, sure, but the kills are so briefly glimpsed and surprisingly blood/gore-free that it looks like the MPAA cut this thing to death - which, as Google tells me, they apparently did. The plot seems almost totally non-existent, even moreso than usual for a movie like this. And I guess I can see what people mean about it supposedly being "giallo-inspired," but god, just barely. Especially with the extreme censorship. I think this would come out as a PG-13 flick nowadays. I dunno, tell me Cdu, what am I missing with this one?
Asian School Girls (2014) - Random sleaze from Netflix! This one's especially for Zelix. Some... well, Asian school girls, happen to get brutally raped and then go off on a revenge mission, because of course they do. Very much a '70s-style sleazy B-movie script, but no real attempt at a '70s feel to the movie. First 30-40 minutes just seem to drag on forever, but it gets at least a little entertaining when the action and terrible CGI gore gets going. Many a dick will be chopped off. Not recommended in the least, but if you ever miss the kind of movies you'd see on USA Up All Night, it'll do.
The Amish: Shunned (2014) - Good PBS doc on exactly what the title implies - people who've left the church for a variety of reasons and found themselves cut off from everyone they knew. It's interesting in that most of them seem to have left not because they rejected religion, but just because of the "rules" of the Amish more than anything.
|
|
|
Post by Cducharme on Mar 20, 2015 8:53:57 GMT -5
Lugnut you don't have the chance to build the love of F13 part two. People like me love it because it was the first time we saw Jason being Jason, in the end of the first he was a spindly rotting corpse like body, here he's the killer we all know and love. But 3 is an infinitely better film over all.
|
|
|
Post by I'm Almost Human on Mar 20, 2015 9:04:56 GMT -5
Lugnut you don't have the chance to build the love of F13 part two. People like me love it because it was the first time we saw Jason being Jason, in the end of the first he was a spindly rotting corpse like body, here he's the killer we all know and love. But 3 is an infinitely better film over all. Friday the 13th 3 is my favorite movie.. I love the series to death. Friday the 13th was really one of the first American slasher films in the mainstream to feature not only gore (even though it wasn't over the top), but gratuitous nudity. It also took what Halloween kind of started and really ran with it to create the modern slasher formula. A lot of Italian flicks were already doing that type of shit, but they didn't seem to catch on until the 80s when people started to discover Argento, D'Amato, etc.. The Tom Savini gore era was really started with F13 and then The Burning.. he really set the stage for the 80s horror genre.
|
|
|
Post by lugnut on Mar 20, 2015 9:07:25 GMT -5
Lugnut you don't have the chance to build the love of F13 part two. People like me love it because it was the first time we saw Jason being Jason, in the end of the first he was a spindly rotting corpse like body, here he's the killer we all know and love. But 3 is an infinitely better film over all. Is there an unrated cut of Part 2 around anywhere? (I think Netflix has the unrated version of Part 1). This one just looks censored as hell, I really do think it could get a PG-13 these days. I have a feeling all the reinstated gore would help it a whole lot. (I think Google told me the cuts totaled like 90 seconds, almost all of them edits to kills)
|
|
|
Post by Cducharme on Mar 20, 2015 10:21:55 GMT -5
But compared to the later entries it is tame gore wise.
I love the atmosphere, but can understand someone who's seeing it for the first time now instead of closer to release would find it comparatively boring.
|
|