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jimbies
Noose Springsteen

Joined: Thu Jul 21, 2016 2:52 pm
Posts: 4145
Location: Canada
PostPosted: Thu May 27, 2021 8:38 am 
 

acid_bukkake wrote:
I definitely think the director's previous work, The Void, is vastly superior, because that was focused and knew what it wanted to be from the word go.


The Void was filmed about 80 seconds from where I grew up, and in an abandoned high school where I once recorded an album. I see haven't seen it, even though numerous people I personally know worked on it.

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Empyreal
The Final Frontier

Joined: Thu Nov 30, 2006 6:58 pm
Posts: 35179
Location: Where the dead rule the night
PostPosted: Thu May 27, 2021 8:41 am 
 

Psycho Goreman I just thought was a riot to watch. Really just a lot of fucking around but I found humor in it. I agree that The Void and Turbo Kid were better though.
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YesIam
Metal newbie

Joined: Mon Mar 08, 2010 10:44 am
Posts: 264
Location: Kenya
PostPosted: Thu May 27, 2021 12:20 pm 
 

I think most of what the guys in Astron-6 touch becomes gold, and the majority of the movies associated with the guys are really fun. The Void is the absolute highlight and more or less perfect, followed by the incredible The Editor, but Manborg, Leprechaun Returns and Psycho Goreman are all a total blast as well. Steven Kostanski's fake trailer Bio-Cop is also up there. It's only 5 minutes long, but I've probably spent a couple hours on the film itself as I've had it on repeat so many times. Incredible work!

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KeeperOfTheMissingLink
Metal newbie

Joined: Wed Oct 08, 2014 11:05 am
Posts: 149
Location: United States
PostPosted: Thu May 27, 2021 6:02 pm 
 

Curious_dead wrote:
Well, if at least one half of the movie had been interesting, I would have been more likely to overlook the other half's flaws.

And I know Hollywood tends to overexplain, but really, a spacesuit-wearing alien isn't new or confusing. I understand why from a Hollywood perspective it would be an issue since they really feel the need to explain every little detail, but I'm talking purely from a "let's make the movie better" perspective.


Eh, I don't know. Color me a skeptic, but I'm still not convinced that if those minuscule changes were made you wouldn't go from "this movie bothered me" to "this movie didn't bother me". Admittedly, I'm a big Shyamalan fan but in my experience, whenever people dunk on him, it's not the result of a thought-out critique, it's usually a dog-pile mentality. The logic is that lots of people say Shyamalan sucks and is stupid, so a person watches a movie like Signs to sing along with the choir to also say he sucks and is stupid.


Last edited by KeeperOfTheMissingLink on Fri Jul 30, 2021 12:57 am, edited 1 time in total.
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acid_bukkake
SAD!

Joined: Fri Jan 16, 2015 10:45 am
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Location: United States
PostPosted: Thu May 27, 2021 8:44 pm 
 

Saying that aliens in sci-fi movies don't wear suits is ignoring the best scenes of Fire in the Sky.
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Gravetemplar
Metal freak

Joined: Tue Mar 05, 2019 10:08 am
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Location: Antarctica
PostPosted: Fri May 28, 2021 5:50 am 
 

I mean, 71% of the Earth's surface is water. The aliens could have least checked where the hell were they going. Plus, there's also water in the air we breathe, even if they don't breathe they would have automatically died in most places around Earth that aren't deserted just by the humidity in the air. It makes no fucking sense.

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rawsewage
Metalhead

Joined: Fri Jan 23, 2009 3:29 pm
Posts: 475
Location: Shamokin, PA
PostPosted: Fri May 28, 2021 7:47 am 
 

YesIam wrote:
I think most of what the guys in Astron-6 touch becomes gold, and the majority of the movies associated with the guys are really fun. The Void is the absolute highlight and more or less perfect, followed by the incredible The Editor, but Manborg, Leprechaun Returns and Psycho Goreman are all a total blast as well. Steven Kostanski's fake trailer Bio-Cop is also up there. It's only 5 minutes long, but I've probably spent a couple hours on the film itself as I've had it on repeat so many times. Incredible work!


You ever watch Cool Guys from them? Probably my favorite of theirs.

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CoconutBackwards
Bullet Centrist

Joined: Thu Dec 01, 2016 2:02 pm
Posts: 1787
PostPosted: Fri May 28, 2021 8:55 am 
 

acid_bukkake wrote:
Saying that aliens in sci-fi movies don't wear suits is ignoring the best scenes of Fire in the Sky.


I've still never seen this movie.

Those movie posters scared the SHIT out of me when I was younger.
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Curious_dead
Metalhead

Joined: Wed Sep 20, 2006 12:13 pm
Posts: 1476
PostPosted: Fri May 28, 2021 9:10 am 
 

Gravetemplar wrote:
I mean, 71% of the Earth's surface is water. The aliens could have least checked where the hell were they going. Plus, there's also water in the air we breathe, even if they don't breathe they would have automatically died in most places around Earth that aren't deserted just by the humidity in the air. It makes no fucking sense.


I really think Shyamalan wanted to do a War of the World type thing, but at least in WotW it makes sense that the aliens might not have known a bacteria would be deadly to them; it makes no sense that the aliens not only didn't know water was deadly to them, that they didn't wear any protective suit and that they found out about it only when Gibson's kid splashed them with water.

EDIT: Also, RAIN. CLOUDS. It makes no sense at all. We must assume they are intelligent enough to travel faster than light and come with super ships... but they also must leave messages in corn fields AND don't even know what water is? How do they live without water? It raises more questions that having them in a suit would.

KeeperOfTheMissingLink wrote:
Eh, I don't know. Color me a skeptic, but I'm still not convinced that if those minuscule changes were made you would go from "this movie bothered me" to "this movie didn't bother me". Admittedly, I'm a big Shyamalan fan but in my experience, whenever people dunk on him, it's not the result of a thought-out critique, it's usually a dog-pile mentality. The logic is that lots of people say Shyamalan sucks and is stupid, so a person watches a movie like Signs to sing along with the choir to also say he sucks and is stupid.


I mean, those "minuscule changes" would mean the alien part of the movie at least made some goddamned sense. It doesn't always take a big change to make something make sense. Now it's just bonkers ridiculous. It doesn't make a lick of sense. And yes, I'm convinced if the alien part made sense, it would make the rest more worthwhile. The movie hinges on both the aliens and the Gibson family issues. Half the movie (the aliens) is just downright stupid. Now you're left with half a movie that it best, decent.

But when you think about the second part, you hit the part where "everything has a meaning" ("Oh look your kid is a weirdo that places glasses of water all over the house for no discernable reason? IT WAS TO SAVE YOU FROM ALIENS!!!") it's... not much better. Like, I can appreciate what he wanted to do, and like I said, the base story he had was clever, but he didn't work enough on how to tie everything up. So the alien part undermine the family drama part. And even if I really liked that part... it's half the movie. I'm not sure how one can just ignore the stupidity that is the alien part, look at the butchered half of a movie that is left and think "you know, this is decent". Both parts have to work.

And like I said... I loved 6th sense, I loved Unbreakable, I really wanted to like Signs. Split is on my watching list. I'm not out to get the guy. I think he's got great imagination, and I know he can tie up good storylines. Signs just isn't one of them. Accusing me of having dog-pile mentality is just bullshit. It's ok if you like it. I know I like flawed movies; but I can assure you that I'm not just jumping on a Shyamalan hate band wagon.

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KeeperOfTheMissingLink
Metal newbie

Joined: Wed Oct 08, 2014 11:05 am
Posts: 149
Location: United States
PostPosted: Fri May 28, 2021 6:17 pm 
 

Curious_dead wrote:
Accusing me of having dog-pile mentality is just bullshit.


Hey, I'm just pressing you a little bit. I've heard people making these arguments before and sometimes I feel it necessary to give a little push-back to see if they're being sincere or if they're just mindlessly parroting everyone else. I'm convinced you're not a Shyamalan-bashing automaton. However, I still have more to say:

For the sake of argument, here's a couple of justifications as to why I think the aliens would invade a planet that mostly contains a substance that harms them:

1). They didn't know. They either a) haven't visited a planet before and don't know how dangerous it could be to do so, or b) they have visited other planets and during those visits, they were not harmed by the main liquid substances on those planets so they figured it'd be safe to assume that it'd be the same on Earth.

2). They do know and are trying to be cautious, but there are a minority of aliens who are cocky and disobedient, and they decide that they're not pussies who are afraid of water and head to Earth anyway despite warnings from the rest of their species. They then find out the hard way that they should have listened to those warnings.

3). These aliens are the extra-terrestrial equivalent of Kamikaze soldiers where survival is only secondary to their overall mission of poisoning the human race. Being that this film was released when 9/11 was still an open-wound, I think it's fair to say that this was how most people viewed the aliens, so for the same reason that the terrorists who drove the plane into the World Trade Center didn't bring a parachute for back-up, the aliens in Signs didn't wear a suit that would prevent their natural toxins from affecting a human being.

So for every hole that you could poke into the film's world-building, you could fill that hole up with a justification, but doing either is just mentally masturbating over a detail of a film that's not the main point of the film. I guess one of my main disagreements I have with you is that the film is 50% Graham and his family and 50% the aliens. This isn't like Halloween where Michael Myers' background is given as much focus as the people he's terrorizing, the aliens in Signs are just a scary MacGuffin. They're not important to the overall story, but they keep the story moving, which is why I think it's silly whenever people fixate on it and think it's the reason why they can't get into the movie.

As an example, I really don't like the movie or the show What We Do in the Shadows, and when I watched it for the first time, I couldn't help but fixate on the fact that the documentary crew seemed really chill even though they were filming carnivorous vampires who could fly, go through walls and turn people to sleep with just the wave of their hands. I asked "Why aren't they running away screaming" or "Why are they so steady when holding the cameras?" If I wanted to, I could make an elaborate argument as to why this world-building hiccup just completely ruins the film and that anyone who doesn't notice it is just too forgiving a movie-watcher. I could do that but it'd be a giant waste of time when all I could say is "I don't care about the characters and I don't find the film/show funny". One could also do the same thing that I did with the aliens in Signs and argue why the documentary crew in WWDitS are so calm, but it's really not a detail worth fixating on, because WWDitS is not about the documentary crew, it's about the vampires and the other monsters they interact with. In any case, I'm pretty sure that even if the documentary crew were acting more like I wanted them to, I would just fixate on another detail, because the film itself really isn't my cup of tea.

My point is, I think that even if the aliens' reasoning for invading a planet that is mostly made up of a substance that harms them was satisfying to you, I'd wager a lot that you'd just focus on another minute detail that bothers you because neither the family is engrossing nor the world of the film interesting to you. I'm not trying to bash you or proselytize you into liking the film, I'm just arguing what I'm seeing.


Last edited by KeeperOfTheMissingLink on Fri Jul 30, 2021 1:03 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Empyreal
The Final Frontier

Joined: Thu Nov 30, 2006 6:58 pm
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Location: Where the dead rule the night
PostPosted: Sat May 29, 2021 12:27 pm 
 

All of this basically just comes down to taste... if you like a movie you'll overlook whatever weird little things about the plot might come off as inconsistent. If you hate a movie then you'll end up nitpicking endless random stuff about it. That whole youtube/Nostalgia Critic/etc movie reviewing thing really influenced a lot of it, but that's not the only (or best) way to critique things I don't think.
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YesIam
Metal newbie

Joined: Mon Mar 08, 2010 10:44 am
Posts: 264
Location: Kenya
PostPosted: Sat May 29, 2021 1:33 pm 
 

rawsewage wrote:
YesIam wrote:
I think most of what the guys in Astron-6 touch becomes gold, and the majority of the movies associated with the guys are really fun. The Void is the absolute highlight and more or less perfect, followed by the incredible The Editor, but Manborg, Leprechaun Returns and Psycho Goreman are all a total blast as well. Steven Kostanski's fake trailer Bio-Cop is also up there. It's only 5 minutes long, but I've probably spent a couple hours on the film itself as I've had it on repeat so many times. Incredible work!


You ever watch Cool Guys from them? Probably my favorite of theirs.


No, I have not. But it looks really cool. Gonna check it out for sure. Tanks!

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Zelkiiro
Pounding the world with a fish of steel

Joined: Sat Apr 18, 2009 5:30 pm
Posts: 7729
Location: Pennsylvania
PostPosted: Fri Jun 04, 2021 7:13 pm 
 

My brother and I just got back from the newest Conjuring film. We both really like the first two films, as wonderfully atmospheric haunted house movies and as engrossing character dramas featuring versions of Ed and Lorraine Warren that aren't total frauds and hucksters. The Conjuring 1 and 2 are pretty much everything you could possibly want from a haunted house flick.

This new film maintains that same high level of quality in terms of atmosphere and character drama, but the horror aspect is...let's be generous and say it's much weaker this time around. We've had some jump-scares in the past, but The Conjuring 3 is jump-scare city. Only occasionally are we given a spooky, moody shot or shown any kind of imagery that is evocative or unsettling. Which is a shame. The story this time around does suffer a little bit, with a human antagonist who is cool and intimidating but ultimately kinda pointless, and centering around a plot twist that almost feels out of left field. But hey, Patrick Wilson and Vera Formiga are still knocking it out of the fucking park in these roles, and I liked the supporting cast, even if it is the weakest supporting cast thus far.

All in all, The Conjuring 3 is still great if you're going in for more of the character drama and occultic atmosphere the series is known for. But if you're here for creepy, spooky times...eh, you're gonna be disappointed. If the first two films are rock-solid 8.5/10s, this one is a struggling 6.5/10. Could be worse, but I know it could also be better.
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Curious_dead
Metalhead

Joined: Wed Sep 20, 2006 12:13 pm
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 05, 2021 7:36 am 
 

I like The Conjuring 1, but I'm always pissed that most spin-offs apparently range from "terrible" to "passable". I kinda wish they were more consistent, the idea of a "horror cinematic universe" is really cool. And even though the real Warrens were absolute charlatans and I kinda wish the movie didn't make them into protagonists, it's good to have some horror stories with recognizable, recurring protags, when usually it's "the villain and some no-names that'll either die, be re-cast or never be heard of again".

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Empyreal
The Final Frontier

Joined: Thu Nov 30, 2006 6:58 pm
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 08, 2021 9:55 am 
 

A Quiet Place II - Pretty weak. The first one was a competent story and had all the beats of a mainstream horror movie you'd need, so it was successful enough at what it wanted, though I've liked other movies a lot more since then. This one just feels pointless, a lot of running around like a discount Walking Dead, just more faceless postapocalyptic thriller generica. I didn't care about anything that happened and couldn't really see what the point was in continuing this story. And the monsters weren't scary anymore because we've become used to them since the first. That combined with a lack of good story just makes this a huge nothingburger of a movie.

Caveat - Really weird, intense movie. Something about the direction and mood were just palpably wrong and eerie at all times, with the story of a guy taking an unusual babysitting job on an island going in all kinds of directions. There were a lot of nods to very old horror and even Hitchcock in the story. Everything about this just felt utterly captivating and macabre. A great piece of horror.
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Sepulchrave
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Joined: Mon Jul 27, 2015 7:29 pm
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 09, 2021 7:57 am 
 

The Empty Man was seriously good. The premise sounds a little hackneyed, but the themes that this film explores go in a totally different direction. This is not your average Blumhouse horror or overly portentous "arthouse" crap. I strongly recommend it to fans of Benson & Moorhead, certain J-horror like Pulse or Noroi, and weird fiction in general. It is probably the finest film in the genre's past decade. You know you're in for a ride when the in-universe high school is named after Jacques Derrida.
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SuperVeji4
Metalhead

Joined: Sun Sep 17, 2006 10:33 pm
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 09, 2021 11:37 am 
 

Sepulchrave wrote:
The Empty Man was seriously good. The premise sounds a little hackneyed, but the themes that this film explores go in a totally different direction. This is not your average Blumhouse horror or overly portentous "arthouse" crap. I strongly recommend it to fans of Benson & Moorhead, certain J-horror like Pulse or Noroi, and weird fiction in general. It is probably the finest film in the genre's past decade. You know you're in for a ride when the in-universe high school is named after Jacques Derrida.

Holy shit. First, I hear Bobby Lee and Steebee Weebee praising this film on the Bad Friends podcast, then I read your comment, and then I find the film critic Chris Stuckman praising the shit out of this film on YouTube. I am now dying to see a film that I just discovered a mere 15 minutes ago...

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Empyreal
The Final Frontier

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PostPosted: Wed Jun 09, 2021 12:21 pm 
 

Yeah, I'd heard some things about that somewhere. I'll check it out tonight.
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~Guest 361478
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Joined: Tue May 19, 2015 4:55 pm
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 09, 2021 1:27 pm 
 

Tried watching 'Page Eight' (2011) the other night, as it has a decent cast - Bill Nighy, Rachel Weisz, Gambon, Ralph Fiennes, Felicity Jones - and well, I can't reccommend it UNLESS you're playing some kind of 'spot the Le Carre cliche' drinking game. Elderly spies with young boss running them ragged ? Modern politician that gets taken down a peg ? Everyone has nice homes full of art ? lots of long walks in gas-lamp lit parks ? Oxford college ties ? Brunette-waif-next-door leading the protagonist off a cliff ? Evil Americans up to no good ? Angry daughter for no obvious reason ?

Honestly, it's like someone took the last five or ten Le Carre books, took out the good ones, chucked the remainder in a blender, and made sure to cream off any and all style, charisma, humour, depth.

Direction was rubbish too - mixture of cheap shaky-cam and close-up dialogue like in Mass Effect or something.

Waste not thy time. Read 'Our Kind of Traitor' and 'A Delicate Truth' instead.

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Empyreal
The Final Frontier

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PostPosted: Thu Jun 10, 2021 12:54 pm 
 

The Empty Man - I don't think this is the best horror movie of the last several years, nor comparable to Benson/Moorhead, but it is good. This was basically a throwback to old 90s and 2000s horror with twists and mind-games and themes about urban legends and supernatural shit - it reminded me of a lot of those older movies, but done better than many of them were. Very cool production value and some eerie shit happening. I thought it was probably too long, but it never really got boring. Plot was kinda silly but done with so much earnest seriousness that it actually did keep you invested the entire time.

I guess a lot of it with those teen horror flicks from the '00s did come down to the execution all those years. If there was care put into them maybe we coulda gotten some good art. But yeah this is as lavish and big-budget and well done as the new IT movies were - blockbuster horror. Very impressive albeit not really having a lot of substance at the end of the day.

Spoiler: show
I thought around halfway through "this kinda reminds me of Angel Heart with Mickey Rourke" and then the twist at the end proved me right. Good times. I do think the whole 'none of this was really real' stuff was a bit hokey but again, it was executed well.
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Subrick
Metal Strongman

Joined: Sun Sep 12, 2010 7:27 pm
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 10, 2021 3:42 pm 
 

I just found out right now about George Romero's lost film The Amusement Park. For those unaware, Romero made this movie in the early 70s as a commission by a church of all places as a cautionary tale about ageism and elderly abuse. The church refused to release it because, as George Romero made it, it was terrifying as fuck, and thus remained lost until a print was found in 2017. It got screened at a film festival, then got a 4K restoration a couple years later, and now it's on Shudder for streaming as of two days ago. I don't have time to watch it today, but I am one hundred billion percent putting this on over the weekend on the big 4K screen my wife and I just got.

Also, for those wary about its quality, it has a 93% on Rotten Tomatoes, and the few reviews I've skimmed of it so as to not be spoiled called it a hidden gem and lost classic of horror. We shall see.
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aaronmb666
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Joined: Mon Jan 03, 2005 3:37 am
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 11, 2021 12:36 am 
 

Army of the Dead- me and my wife are big zombie fans and I was looking pretty forward to it....turned it off halfway through.

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Empyreal
The Final Frontier

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PostPosted: Fri Jun 11, 2021 2:32 am 
 

George Romero's The Amusement Park - I dunno if I'd watch this a lot, but in a way it's even more disturbing than some movies because it has no real core aside from the utter id of how old people are treated. It's a PSA as was said above, and Romero did a bang up job creating this unsettling, oppressive atmosphere. Horror at its best is so often about pure and primal feelings and this did that very well.
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ChineseDownhill
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 15, 2021 7:26 pm 
 

Wrong Turn (2021) - I will give this some credit for occasional plot developments I didn't see coming. OTOH even those often seemed like 'subverting your expectations' in a gimmicky, unearned way. The movie was also a bit too long and almost pulled an inappropriate main character switcheroo in the second half. (There's a clear final girl, as you'd expect, but her father got too close to protagonist duty at times.) 5 / 10

This did make me want to watch Wrong Turn 2003 again, which I remember being decent?
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YesIam
Metal newbie

Joined: Mon Mar 08, 2010 10:44 am
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Location: Kenya
PostPosted: Wed Jun 16, 2021 2:41 am 
 

ChineseDownhill wrote:
Wrong Turn (2021) - I will give this some credit for occasional plot developments I didn't see coming. OTOH even those often seemed like 'subverting your expectations' in a gimmicky, unearned way. The movie was also a bit too long and almost pulled an inappropriate main character switcheroo in the second half. (There's a clear final girl, as you'd expect, but her father got too close to protagonist duty at times.) 5 / 10

This did make me want to watch Wrong Turn 2003 again, which I remember being decent?


I thought Wrong Turn 2021 was really good, although it could easily have been released under a different title.


I enjoyed the Wrong Turn franchise way more than I thought I would. I'll rate them something like this:

Wrong Turn 1 - 7/10
Wrong Turn 2 - 8/10
Wrong Turn 3 - 4/10
Wrong Turn 4 - 6/10
Wrong Turn 5 - 6/10
Wrong Turn 6 - 6/10

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~Guest 361478
Metalhead

Joined: Tue May 19, 2015 4:55 pm
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 16, 2021 3:43 am 
 

Tried watching 'Scott Pilgrim' the other night - that was an hour of my life I'm never getting back :lol: Thoroughly creepy/unpleasant main character, only slightly better supporting cast, and some of the worst pacing I've ever seen in a film - up there with those horrid old Italian zombie flicks for bizarre changes of pace / plot / tone / whatever. Gave up after an hour, because five more 'look how many clever Street Fighter references we can get in' fights sponsored by Monster didn't appeal. The leads seemed to be seperated by about ten years rather than the four in their real ages, and Anna Kendrick just plays Anna Kendrick - finally a modern devotee of the Roger Moore school of acting ! Kieran Culkin had the best character, another nasty stereotype, but the best acted.

Definitely missing with my last few picks. Going to go for our annual watch of Commando instead of trying to innovate I think :D

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darkeningday
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 16, 2021 5:35 am 
 

Let's get married. Your wife is just gonna have to share.

I don't really like anything by Edgar Wright but at least all of his other movies are actually movies. Scott Pilgrim is some kind of torture device for people who can't interface with its twee wavelength.
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~Guest 361478
Metalhead

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PostPosted: Thu Jun 17, 2021 5:41 am 
 

darkeningday wrote:
Let's get married. Your wife is just gonna have to share.

I don't really like anything by Edgar Wright but at least all of his other movies are actually movies. Scott Pilgrim is some kind of torture device for people who can't interface with its twee wavelength.


Hah ! Yeah don't know the guy, and not encouraged by this one to be honest. Hyper-stylised ADHD-core movies really only work for me when it's Aronofsky - he makes all that insane jumping around work really well.

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Sathanas_BM
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Joined: Sat Oct 17, 2009 1:55 am
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Location: United States of America
PostPosted: Thu Jun 17, 2021 6:54 pm 
 

Methuen wrote:
darkeningday wrote:
Let's get married. Your wife is just gonna have to share.

I don't really like anything by Edgar Wright but at least all of his other movies are actually movies. Scott Pilgrim is some kind of torture device for people who can't interface with its twee wavelength.


Hah ! Yeah don't know the guy, and not encouraged by this one to be honest. Hyper-stylised ADHD-core movies really only work for me when it's Aronofsky - he makes all that insane jumping around work really well.

I’ve never been a fan of Scott Pilgrim, though both Shaun Of The Dead and Hot Fuzz, both by Edgar Wright, are some of my favorite comedies without a doubt. Not only are they genuinely funny, but are legitimately well-written and have just the right amount of heart without ever getting into the territory of heavy-handed sentimentality.
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yentass
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 22, 2021 10:35 am 
 

I guess no one is talking about "Wrath of Man" because all of you knew better? Good call, good call.
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CoconutBackwards
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Joined: Thu Dec 01, 2016 2:02 pm
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 22, 2021 11:04 am 
 

yentass wrote:
I guess no one is talking about "Wrath of Man" because all of you knew better? Good call, good call.


Fuck. It was bad??

I loved The Gentlemen with such a burning passion that it's rekindled my love for Guy Ritchie.
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yentass
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Joined: Sun Nov 23, 2003 9:28 am
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 22, 2021 12:24 pm 
 

CoconutBackwards wrote:
Fuck. It was bad??

It's a very weird kind of "bad" - you might even enjoy it while you're watching, but you're definitely going to hate it by the end, as whatever expectations it's going to set up during the runtime aren't going to be met, whether you were hoping for a mindless action fest or a serious movie.

Basically, if you've ever craved for something as confused as Revolver minus the philosophical/kabbalistic mumbo jumbo - it's your lucky day.
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CoconutBackwards
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Joined: Thu Dec 01, 2016 2:02 pm
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 22, 2021 1:12 pm 
 

yentass wrote:
CoconutBackwards wrote:
Fuck. It was bad??

Basically, if you've ever craved for something as confused as Revolver minus the philosophical/kabbalistic mumbo jumbo - it's your lucky day.


LOL

I just watched that for the first time a couple weeks ago after my rediscovered love for Ritchie and it is not what I'm craving.

I appreciate you saving me the money of paying for this on demand.
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darkeningday
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Joined: Mon Aug 23, 2004 1:20 pm
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 29, 2021 1:46 am 
 

Revolver legit offended me. Though the hitman scene was pretty cool.

The Long Goodbye - Occam's Razor suggests Chandler + Altman + Elliott Gould = unambiguous masterpiece. Occam's Razor is occasionally full of shit. How this is considered one of Altman's best is anyone's guess. I'm straining to think of an Altman movie I liked less, and it's also probably the worst Chandler adaptation I've seen.

They Call Me Trinity/My Name is Still Trinity - Two of the most beloved spaghetti westerns of all time NOT directed by Sergio Leone, yet all I'm left with is head scratches. Both movies play like parodies of The Magnificent Seven, but unless you find what are clearly Amish people called Mormons just to give the leading man two wives, and a constantly farting baby funny, I'm not sure how they're parodies instead of just shitty rip-offs. The best I can say about it is that the dubbing is excellent; the Italian cast are clearly speaking English and are then dubbed flawlessly by Americans. Though you'd never mistake the Italian countryside for central Wyoming or wherever the hell it's supposed to be set.

Not impressed with any of these.
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Smalley
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Joined: Thu Jan 22, 2009 9:06 am
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 29, 2021 3:07 am 
 

darkeningday wrote:
The Long Goodbye - Occam's Razor suggests Chandler + Altman + Elliott Gould = unambiguous masterpiece. Occam's Razor is occasionally full of shit. How this is considered one of Altman's best is anyone's guess. I'm straining to think of an Altman movie I liked less, and it's also probably the worst Chandler adaptation I've seen.
I thought it was pretty solid, but not as good as it could've been, because it kept going back and forth between being a more comedic, satirical take on Noir (like the scene where Marty and his men voluntarily start stripping off their clothes to make Marlowe feel more comfortable doing the same), and taking the genre more seriously (like the moment where Marty does that thing with the glass bottle of Coke), which made it feel conflicted in the end. Plus, its serious side means that it spends a lot of time developing a plot that, again, ends up not mattering that much. Still, it's a solid enough film despite all of that, with enough unique quirk, charm, and entertainment to make it worth watching, even though I can't say that it's a favorite of mine or anything like that.
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REQUIEM
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Joined: Mon Sep 22, 2003 3:58 pm
Posts: 231
Location: Croatia
PostPosted: Wed Jul 07, 2021 7:09 am 
 

yentass wrote:
I guess no one is talking about "Wrath of Man" because all of you knew better? Good call, good call.
did anybody watch the original?

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ChineseDownhill
Metalhead

Joined: Tue Apr 30, 2013 11:19 am
Posts: 1113
Location: United States
PostPosted: Thu Jul 08, 2021 7:25 pm 
 

One old movie I've been meaning to watch for years, plus two new ones.

Mallrats - Sure, the characters are unlikable and the attempt at a story isn't engaging. In a comedy I wouldn't really complain about that stuff if I was consistently laughing. This never rose above 'slightly amusing,' with plenty of dull stretches. The climactic scene was just awful and went on way too long, almost dragging my rating down to 3 / 10. Then I remembered I gave Jay and Silent Bob Reboot a 3, and that was even worse, so I suppose Mallrats gets 4 / 10. (I will defend JASB Strike Back, or at least certain scenes.)

Vicious Fun - 1980s horror film buff stumbles into a support group for serial killers. This was better than I expected at balancing the lighter moments and avoiding the low-budget single-location problem. 7 / 10

Fear Street Part 1: 1994 - Apparently this is the first in a teen horror trilogy, and since it was just good enough that I suppose I'll watch the next installment, I'll be generous and give it 6 / 10.
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Empyreal
The Final Frontier

Joined: Thu Nov 30, 2006 6:58 pm
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Location: Where the dead rule the night
PostPosted: Sun Jul 11, 2021 12:57 pm 
 

I tried Vicious Fun and had to turn it off after like 15 minutes. Really embarrassingly bad.

Son - This starts off with a bang and some more absolutely wicked, diabolical horror, though I can't say the whole movie quite holds up. I liked a lot of things about this, from the seedy settings and dark atmosphere and the acting which was generally very solid (except for the lead detective guy who kind of sucked honestly), and the fact that it constantly kept you on your toes and you didn't really know what to believe for the bulk of the runtime about what's really happening - there are some quite harrowing scenes. But it does get pretty stupid towards its climax and sadly what it eventually lands on is pretty dull cliche at the end. But I did enjoy the ride.

Near Dark - I hadn't seen this in a while. A classic 80s flick - Kathryn Bigelow's direction is masterful and veers seamlessly from a dreamlike haze with Tangerine Dream's soothing and spooky synths over it to dark, seemingly wanton violence that just shoves your nose in it. Love the blend of vampirism and Western settings - these things are always so much cooler than upper class noble vampires coming down from big mansions and shit. The atmosphere is palpable and the movie moves along like a dream. The vampires are a shitload of fun to watch - Bill Paxton kills and Lance Henriksen, between this and Pumpkinhead, is one of the old greats. I can't find anything I didn't like here. It's just one of these classic rugged kinds of 80s horror/action flicks that never get old, coincidentally much like those vampires wouldn't have.
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Gravetemplar
Metal freak

Joined: Tue Mar 05, 2019 10:08 am
Posts: 4652
Location: Antarctica
PostPosted: Sun Jul 11, 2021 2:24 pm 
 

I'm really hyped by this one:


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darkeningday
xXdArKenIngDayXx

Joined: Mon Aug 23, 2004 1:20 pm
Posts: 6032
Location: United States
PostPosted: Sun Jul 11, 2021 4:40 pm 
 

Smalley wrote:
darkeningday wrote:
The Long Goodbye - Occam's Razor suggests Chandler + Altman + Elliott Gould = unambiguous masterpiece. Occam's Razor is occasionally full of shit. How this is considered one of Altman's best is anyone's guess. I'm straining to think of an Altman movie I liked less, and it's also probably the worst Chandler adaptation I've seen.
I thought it was pretty solid, but not as good as it could've been, because it kept going back and forth between being a more comedic, satirical take on Noir (like the scene where Marty and his men voluntarily start stripping off their clothes to make Marlowe feel more comfortable doing the same), and taking the genre more seriously (like the moment where Marty does that thing with the glass bottle of Coke), which made it feel conflicted in the end. Plus, its serious side means that it spends a lot of time developing a plot that, again, ends up not mattering that much. Still, it's a solid enough film despite all of that, with enough unique quirk, charm, and entertainment to make it worth watching, even though I can't say that it's a favorite of mine or anything like that.

Yeah I didn't mean to imply it was a bad movie, just nowhere close to my expectations. Altman's adaptations are typically flawless, Short Cuts may be the only three hour movie where I wanted it to go on for another three hours. Orgs like the usually okay AFI consider The Long Goodbye to be one of his best, something I vociferously contest.

I wish I could be more specific but the movie passed through me like mercury.
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