What films have you watched recently?

BigBearKris · September 2023

Talk to me (2022)

Aussie horror - ''When a group of friends discover how to conjure spirits with an embalmed hand, they become hooked on the new thrill and high-stakes party game -- until one of them goes too far and unleashes terrifying supernatural forces.''

I must say I didn't have high expectations but I was very pleasantly surprised - decent acting, good (for horror like that) story and pretty damn scary. One of the better ones I've seen in a while.

Strong 7.14/10

Offset · September 2023

BigBearKris said:

Talk to me (2022)

Aussie horror - ''When a group of friends discover how to conjure spirits with an embalmed hand, they become hooked on the new thrill and high-stakes party game -- until one of them goes too far and unleashes terrifying supernatural forces.''

I must say I didn't have high expectations but I was very pleasantly surprised - decent acting, good (for horror like that) story and pretty damn scary. One of the better ones I've seen in a while.

Strong 7.14/10

Smells like a strong whiff of W.W. Jacobs' "The Monkey's Paw". Thanks Kris - will check it out :-)

Philly_Q · September 2023

Freaky (Amazon Prime)

For reasons too complicated (and frankly, uninteresting) to explain, a teenage girl and a serial killer exchange bodies... and they only have until midnight to reverse the change before it becomes permanent.

One of my "what shall I watch tonight?" streaming-channel searches somehow led me to this. I really don't know how. I'd been under the impression it was a(nother) pretty straight remake of Freaky Friday, but it's actually a sort of comedy slasher movie with elements of the aforementioned Freaky Friday and, oddly enough, Child's Play.

It's not bad. As I watched it. it reminded me very much of Happy Death Day... and, lo and behold, it's from the same director, Christopher (son of Michael) Landon. The main thing I'll remember is that the lead actress, Kathryn Newton, looks almost eerily like a young Virginia Madsen, which I found quite distracting.

DrCornelius · September 2023

A haunting in Venice at the local fleapit

An over the top cheesily atmospheric Poirot whodunnit set in 1940s Venice. A seance at a haunted house with a dark history and the typical scenario of a group of mismatched attendees who all fall under Poirot’s suspicion .
Dodgy accents aside it’s well acted and despite the over the top attempts to create a gothic eeriness it has its moments.

Feels like a cross between The Lady In Black and any other Poirot film which is no bad thing

7 out of 10 helped by real ale and chilli nuts

Haych · September 2023

Hell or High Water

Two brothers rob banks to save the same bank foreclosing on the family ranch.

Very different to what I thought it would be. I thought it would be gun fights, car chases and foul language but it was actually very watchable and had a number of different themes subtly interwoven.

Had a similar feel to it to No Country for Old Men but that might just have been the parched setting.

7.5/10

Netflix

stufisher · September 2023

The Field

Haven't watched it for years but I love it and will revisit it in the next few days

My bruv just found it in it's entirity on YT ( link below for you if you wanna re-watch or just discover a classic Harris performance) ... powerful, moody, hard-edged and totally credible. When you read the true story and newspaper articles about it then you realise how good it really is.

Me and my bruv did a West of Ireland road trip in 1994 and stumbled upon the location and got drawn in by the whole thing ... go on, you know you want to:

goldtop · September 2023

Philly_Q said:

Evil Dead Rise (Netflix)

Not a sequel, not really a reboot, more a new story set in a version of the Evil Dead universe which has very little to do with any of the previous films. It starts quite promisingly, introducing a family of fairly likeable, reasonably interesting characters (one of them is a touring guitar tech!)... but then jumps so quickly into the ED stuff that the character development's a bit pointless.

It's not bad. Not at all scary, but it gets pretty OTT and gory at the end, without ever having any of the demented fun aspect of the Sam Raimi films. I foolishly paid £5.49 to watch this on Amazon Prime last week, without realising that it was soon to arrive on Netflix.

I watched it, too. Bit disappointing to realise about halfway through that the story wasn't getting bigger - all we're getting is more of the same and with a small cast it got quite predictable. Except for the gore - why do director's spend so much effort on gore detail instead of plot? 4/10

Philly_Q · September 2023

goldtop said:

Philly_Q said:

Evil Dead Rise (Netflix)

Not a sequel, not really a reboot, more a new story set in a version of the Evil Dead universe which has very little to do with any of the previous films. It starts quite promisingly, introducing a family of fairly likeable, reasonably interesting characters (one of them is a touring guitar tech!)... but then jumps so quickly into the ED stuff that the character development's a bit pointless.

It's not bad. Not at all scary, but it gets pretty OTT and gory at the end, without ever having any of the demented fun aspect of the Sam Raimi films. I foolishly paid £5.49 to watch this on Amazon Prime last week, without realising that it was soon to arrive on Netflix.

I watched it, too. Bit disappointing to realise about halfway through that the story wasn't getting bigger - all we're getting is more of the same and with a small cast it got quite predictable. Except for the gore - why do director's spend so much effort on gore detail instead of plot? 4/10

I'd be quite happy to have both.

Offset · September 2023

Offset said:

BigBearKris said:

Talk to me (2022)

Aussie horror - ''When a group of friends discover how to conjure spirits with an embalmed hand, they become hooked on the new thrill and high-stakes party game -- until one of them goes too far and unleashes terrifying supernatural forces.''

I must say I didn't have high expectations but I was very pleasantly surprised - decent acting, good (for horror like that) story and pretty damn scary. One of the better ones I've seen in a while.

Strong 7.14/10

Smells like a strong whiff of W.W. Jacobs' "The Monkey's Paw". Thanks Kris - will check it out :-)

Well... I really tried to get into this. It wasn't a bad film and the acting was quite good...plot was OK... few jumps along the way... but ultimately my attention wandered and it just didn't grab me. Sorry.

4/10.

sinbaadi · September 2023

Matrix Resurrections : I thought it was okay!

So difficult to do anything new with these characters in this universe and the ending was quite lame, but it wasn't all bad. I agree with someone's earlier comment that it feels like a fan fiction made with the actual actors (mostly) but that doesn't mean it's bad.

I am quite capable of enjoying a crappy movie, though.

Blaendulais · September 2023

Bolan's Shoe

Excellent acting especially from female lead. Spall vrilliant and wisely follows Robert Downeys advice to Ben Stiller in Topic Thunder.

8/10

And while we're on it

Tropic Thunder

Awesome 10/10.

JezWynd · September 2023

crosstownvamp said:

rze99 said:
Hell or High Water

Saw it, it wasn't bad - lucky we all have different tastes!
Saw Ben Foster who was in Hell or High Water just last night in Leave no trace. PTSD suffering vet and his daughter struggling to survive off grid. Pretty good.

He was also great in 3.10 from Yuma. He has a powerful look and personality, he seems to get a lot of work.

I've been bingeing Ghibli; Kiki's Delivery Service, followed by My Neighbour Totoro Both utterly beguiling. Hayao Miyazaki has an incredible imagination and style. His films look like labours of love. Cool guy.

JezWynd · September 2023

Philly_Q said:

rze99 said:

Hell or High Water
Movie.

Netflix.

This is a movie for men, about men.

So kind of like Leather Joy Boys?

They're brothers, it's not incenstuous, not physically anyway.

Poboy · September 2023

Evil Dead: Rise

Total shite. 0/10

Haych · September 2023

The Little Things (Netflix)

2021 crime thriller with Denzel Washington and Remi Malek. Set in the 1990s, Washington (Joe Deacon) is working for the Kern Country sheriff's dept when he's sent back to LA County and his old stomping ground, to collect some evidence for an upcoming trial.

While there he meets Malek (Jim Baxter), a cop who is working a case with strong similarities to an unsolved case that is still haunting Deacon and which cost him dearly several years before.

It's not bad, Washington is his usual self and Malek seems at ease and quite natural for once.

There isn't really much tension but it's more a story about the characters than a catch-the-serial-killer plot. I didn't see the twist at the end coming and it ended in a very unexpected way.

6.5/10

Winny_Pooh · September 2023

Offset said:

boogieman said:

Offset said:

Kill List (2011) Prime

British crime/horror/folk horror starring Neil Maskell. I approached this eagerly having previously watched - and thoroughly enjoyed - Bull which also starred Maskell. The cast also includes the excellent Struan Rodger, the lovely MyAnna Buring, and Michael Smiley. I was expecting to really enjoy it as it had received good reviews. Oh dear...

On the plus side, there are some good performances from the central cast. I do like Maskell as an actor (within the confines of his usual genre) and he and Smiley are very watchable in this. Now we get to the problematic part: the plot.

Without giving too much away, our two antiheroes are ex-army assassins for hire. The get a commission from the sinister Struan Rodger, with a few oddities attached to their 'contract'. They start to go about their business (and be warned - they do so with extreme prejudice), but things - along with Maskell's mental health - start to unravel fairly quickly and become extremely weird indeed. The ending is plain batshit.

The issue with all of this is that I could only have a faint stab about what it was all supposed to be about. The ending didn't (for me at least) explain much - if any - of what preceded it and in the end I just thought it was faintly daft and a bit frustrating. Note that I described it as 'folk horror' at the top of the page - that should give you an indication of where things end up, but don't expect The Wicker Man.

Very disappointing - 3.5/10

I did warn you a few pages back that it’s not going to end up anywhere near where it starts. It’s almost like the producers had two separate semi-decent plot ideas but no idea how to start or finish them off. Then they had a eureka moment, down the pub, after a couple of pints of creme de menthe
“ Lissen, lissen mate, I’ve got it… less start off with the, the gangster plot right, burp….then, THEN, it gets into the, the horror bit. Waddya think eh? ”
“You, you, hic, you’re my bes mate you are and not onny that……you mate are a bluddy genus, hic. YEAH less do it!! “

You did indeed. And amusingly, my review-end of "don't expect The Wicker Man" echoed (either consciously or subconsciously) your review of Men, which I especially disliked.

I've seen it twice. 9/10

Excellent genre mashup and darker than almost anything. At first viewing I was also confused but in short

(mild spoiler alert!)

The "group" are grooming him to join and hiring him to do the jobs is a way of testing that he's a special evil fuck. The end scene is an initiation and for him to realise what he truly is by killing you know who. This is the traditional cultural purpose of initiation, transformation. And he becomes that which they recognised and he did not.

Offset · September 2023

Poboy said:

Evil Dead: Rise

Total shite. 0/10

Your review (and others) was a challenge. I lasted 30 minutes. Utter hogwash.

TimmyO · September 2023

Marcel The Shell With Shoes On

Its a documentary about a Shell called Marcel.

Shrews · September 2023

Lifeforce (Prime)

Nude spacegirl (Mathilda May) causes carnage in London when she turns out to be a space vampire.

Loved this film back in the day, it's utterly bonkers. Beware : that's not intentional. It starts off like Alien, turns into Species, evolves into Dracula Dead and Loving It and ends like 28 Weeks Later.

It really needed Christopher Lee and the Twins of Evil to get the maximum effect and probably would've benefitted from being a musical number with Tim Curry in suspenders and Meatloaf on a motorbike.

Nevertheless, if you get to watch one film over the Halloween period make sure it's this one.

10/10

Offset · September 2023

Shrews said:

Lifeforce (Prime)

Nude spacegirl (Mathilda May) causes carnage in London when she turns out to be a space vampire.

Loved this film back in the day, it's utterly bonkers. Beware : that's not intentional. It starts off like Alien, turns into Species, evolves into Dracula Dead and Loving It and ends like 28 Weeks Later.

It really needed Christopher Lee and the Twins of Evil to get the maximum effect and probably would've benefitted from being a musical number with Tim Curry in suspenders and Meatloaf on a motorbike.

Nevertheless, if you get to watch one film over the Halloween period make sure it's this one.

10/10

Ha! I loved this back in the day too. I really don't know how Frank Finlay, Colin Firth or Patrick Stewart found themselves in it but they did add a bit of gravitas to a film which is, as you say, utterly bonkers.

I feel inspired to watch it again :-)

JezWynd · September 2023

La La Land. Mixed feelings on this one. In spite of the Cinemascope logo at the start, the film had a digital sharpness to it that grated on me. Apparently, Panavision made special lenses just for the film and it was shot in anamorphic on Super 35mm. The colour was very bright and sharp and was an important part of the set designs.

Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone were excellent but the script was sometimes really odd - Gosling's about face from tortured artist to road band whore was clunky as fuck, nearly matched by a similar scene where Stone abandons her dream of becoming an actress. The two scenes were so bad it made me wonder if it was a deliberate stylistic choice.

There's lots to like with some fantasy sequences, but those too had that sharp look that made them look cheap and pointed up the studio sets - maybe that too was a deliberate choice - it is after all a movie set in LA, on film studio lots. 7/10

memo to self - must watch One From The Heart again.

Philly_Q · September 2023

JezWynd said:

La La Land.
Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone were excellent but the script was sometimes really odd - Gosling's about face from tortured artist to road band whore was clunky as fuck, nearly matched by a similar scene where Stone abandons her dream of becoming an actress. The two scenes were so bad it made me wonder if it was a deliberate stylistic choice.

For me the film was killed stone dead at that point. I hadn't expected to like it but gave it a go because of the director. As you say, that about-change in plot direction was really clunky, and who the hell thought it was a good idea to cast John Legend as... himself? He's as wooden as wood can be.

SteveRobinson · September 2023

rze99 said:

Hell or High Water

Movie.

Netflix.

This is a movie for men, about men.

Two ill-matched prison-distanced brothers stage bank robberies to get their family farm out of debt, in rural shit-kicking middle big sky Texas nowhere.

Two cops, one about to retire in 3 weeks, the other, still middling, start to hunt them down.

Highly reco... screw, it. It's fucking brilliant.

10/10

Watched this last night and enjoyed it a lot even though I found the poverty and desperation mostly sad.

idiotwindow · September 2023

rze99 said:

Hell or High Water

Highly reco... screw, it. It's fucking brilliant.

10/10

It's certainly ok (as is Taylor Sheridan's other modern western, Wind River) but it mostly riffs on fairly well worn ideas and characters. Hell or High Water is essentially a mash-up of No Country for Old Men and Breaking Bad.

idiotwindow · September 2023

Watched Men on Netflix last night, a 2022 Alex Garland folk horror film. It starts off like an episode of Hammer House of Horror before veering off into League of Gentleman territory with more than a sprinkling of the Dick Emery Show. The resemblance to the latter isn't helped by the fact that all the male parts in the film are played by the same actor, Rory Kinnear. One of his characters looks like a Hellraiser-ish Green Man, another like 1970s Marlon Brando. The creepiest character is the boy, Samuel, played by a younger actor but with Kinnear's face superimposed on his head. The film is worth persevering with, being quite amusing in places (possibly unintentionally?), nicely photographed and has a satisfyingly bonkers final 10-20 minutes. In truth, the film isn't that dissimilar to Garland's previous film Annihilation, both in the vibe of the ending and in the central character (a woman dealing with a prior tragedy). 3/5 but recommended.

Shrews · September 2023

Lair Of The White Worm (Prime)

Hugh Grant in a pre 4 Weddings horror film. He plays Hugh Grant in the start of his Hugh Grant career alongside Amanda Donohue who plays a very memorable part and is genuinely scary as a very seductive, white-worm-worshipping-wicca-woman.

Surreal and cultish, but definitely memorable. Just don't go around her gaff for a bath. Although, coming to think of it, what a way to go!

8/10

ICBM · September 2023

Philly_Q said:

For me the film was killed stone dead at that point. I hadn't expected to like it but gave it a go because of the director. As you say, that about-change in plot direction was really clunky, and who the hell thought it was a good idea to cast John Legend as... himself? He's as wooden as wood can be.

You mean almost as wooden as Gosling?

I haven't seen it, and probably won't. He nearly killed Blade Runner 2049 stone dead, and he's pretty poor in Barbie too.

Philly_Q · September 2023

ICBM said:

Philly_Q said:

For me the film was killed stone dead at that point. I hadn't expected to like it but gave it a go because of the director. As you say, that about-change in plot direction was really clunky, and who the hell thought it was a good idea to cast John Legend as... himself? He's as wooden as wood can be.

You mean almost as wooden as Gosling?

I haven't seen it, and probably won't. He nearly killed Blade Runner 2049 stone dead, and he's pretty poor in Barbie too.

He was really good in The Believer. I quite like him as an actor, he's always got that slight smile on his face which to me says "you might think I'm wooden, but it's intentional". Compare with, say, Sam Worthington from Avatar, who looks like he's completely dead behind the eyes... that's proper wooden.

west · September 2023

I think his best acting performance is in Half nelson ....

west · September 2023

also reasonable realistic in this .... and the sentiment in context ...

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