Movies you've just watched

[BIL]

My kinda runtime!

IKR I generally regard 75min as Runtime Of The Gods, but if a movie's got the balls to floor it under that overpass shearing off the top floor in a hail of twisted metal, it's all good too

[EmperorIng]

I just saw that Arrow is releasing a BD of Switchblade Sisters. Does this get your grindhouse seal of approval, drauch?

I really enjoyed Arrow's set of the Female Prisoner Scorpion series, which was some top-notch stuff... At least the first two films. The third was good (a little slow) and the 4th was just, eh, which was expected once the original director bowed out.

Jailhouse 41 though, that second film. It's simply incredible. Wasn't expecting such a good movie from the premise but there it was. And all the colors on the BD just pop off so much, that even the scene I linked above doesn't quite do it justice.

[drauch]

I just saw that Arrow is releasing a BD of Switchblade Sisters. Does this get your grindhouse seal of approval, drauch?

I saw that! Been a long time since I've seen it, but I really liked it. All of Jack Hill's stuff is really awesome, especially his stuff with Pam Grier. Whipped out some of his women in prison movies again the other day for a rewatch .

Arrow is so great. I saw they were being bought out though... hopefully that doesn't cease their great releases. They've been really killing it the past couple of years with some of their Japanese stuff.

[Necronopticous]

Just watched Amat Escalante‘s 2016 film Untamed on a whim. What a bed time story! Loved loved loved it. Now I’m highly curious about the rest of his filmography.

[vol.2]

Just watched Amat Escalante‘s 2016 film Untamed on a whim.

Oh weird. Mexican tentacle monsters. I will definitely check that out!

[xxx1993]

The new Mortal Kombat was a massive improvement over Annihilation.

[Mischief Maker]

The new Mortal Kombat was a massive improvement over Annihilation.

If that's not damning with faint praise, I don't know what is!

[xxx1993]

Either way, I liked it.

[Necronopticous]

It’s absolutely terrible but we laughed our asses off talking shit the whole time. So...thumbs up I guess?

[lilmanjs]

Mortal Kombat. Yeah the new one.
It was edited so poorly that it ran by you at 300mph without a care in the world. Kano was the best part of this for sure, and Cole is lame and annoying most of the time. Still the action was well done and that's really all I was here for. Paper thin plot, crap editing, and to top it off, Techno Syndrome made into an awful dubstep track.

[xxx1993]

Why do people hate dubstep so much? I actually love it! So does Deadpool!

[Mischief Maker]

Why do people hate dubstep so much? I actually love it! So does Deadpool!

If the word "step" wasn't in the name, I don't think people would have hated it. Because dubstep implies it's dance music.

Play some house in the club with a steady 4/4 beat and everyone on the dance floor looks great.

Play some dubstep and everyone attempting to dance looks like a moron.

[vol.2]

Though I'm not a fan, dubstep was actually very popular for a period of time, so it's not really fair saying people hate it.

I don't dislike dubstep nearly as much as I hate electro-swing (though I put them in roughly the same ballpark of music).

[BIL]

My fuckin TV died so I watched some more movies.

The Funeral (1996, dir. Abel Ferrara) 1930s NYC mafia tragedy. Youngest of a trio of small-time mob brothers is murdered, survivors ruminate. Holy fuck was this bleak. Fleeting glances of review blurbs had me expecting more of a farce. Notably wry and idiosyncratic for a US mafia flick, as to be expected of the singular Mr. Ferrara. Low on carnage, big on disaster. Superb cast - Christopher Walken, Chris Penn, Vincent Gallo, Annabella Sciorra and Benicio Del Toro all excel. Recommended if you want something dark, offbeat and down-paced in the mafia subgenre.



SUPER FAVOURITE ACTORS BOUNS: David Patrick "Sammiches" Kelly! Johnny "Non-Stop Ass Rape" Ventimiglia!

Cop Land (1997, dir. James Mangold) A Neo-Western in thinly spun Neo-Noir clothing. TEH TOWN is FULLA CORRUPT VARMINTS, and only TEH SHERRIFF can stop 'em! Very likeable for what it is. Central conceit - cops commuting to inner-city warzones from quiet suburbia, siege mentality fostering - apparently got studio pushback. "COP LANDS do not exist IRL!" It's a metaphor FFS. Another curiously star-packed, well-played lowkey crime flick. Stallone, Keitel, De Niro, Liotta all familiarly enjoyable. Yes, "familiarly," Sly =/= Ahnuld, you, you plebes.

SUPER FAVOURITE ACTORS BOUNS: Johnny V! Again! And a million other future Sopranos favourites, including Arthur J. "Maybe you should try suckin' a cock!" Nascarella and Bob "Stutter Step" Patrick!

[vol.2]

I remember watching Cop Land and enjoying it. It's the only time I felt Stallone did an above average job in a serious role.

With him, I can never get the Dead Kennedys jab out of my head. From the back cover of Bedtime for Democracy:

[Mischief Maker]

The first 20 minutes of Moulin Rouge!

I'm one of those weirdos who defends the Wachowski's Speed Racer, so I have no problem with kaleidoscopic visual insanity. But that music, chopping up famous pop songs and stitching them together like a Frankenstein's Monster, it felt like I was being beaten to a pulp by my own nostalgia so I bailed.

Noah

Gonna have to disagree with Lindsay Ellis here, The Fountain is still my favorite Aronofsky film. On the visuals side Noah was surprisingly drab, on the metaphors side this movie was completely on-the-nose, to the point that several times in the film you have characters straight up explaining God's intentions where I would have preferred more dream sequences that leave things up to interpretation. And I can't believe this film had more than four-times the budget of The Fountain, that movie looked so much more visually impressive than this. I guess sometimes creativity thrives when overcoming limitations.

[lilmanjs]

Why do people hate dubstep so much? I actually love it! So does Deadpool!

Because it has very little to do with the Dub Reggae genre of music that it gets its name from and in general is just a mashup of crappy noise and wobble basslines that do nothing for most everyone. Dub Techno has a hell of a lot more to do with the Dub music than Dubstep ever will. I have tried a bunch of times to get into dubstep and it just is awful to me.

[MintyTheCat]

NOROI

Just landed, but I need a subtitle file. any of you chaps seen it? It came recommended.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noroi:_The_Curse

[BIL]

I watched Noroi a couple years back, coming highly recommended by a few film buffs here (iconoclast and Zen, if memory serves?). I remember enjoying it, albeit finding it a bit by-the-book in the Japanese vengeful ghost stakes. Can't recall much specific outside of the final act, which left quite an impression!

Quickly followed it up with The Wailing / Gokseong, after similar recommendations. South Korean film about a rural town afflicted by an apparent plague of familial murder/suicides. Excellent slow-boiling horror, good way to pass a long dark evening.

[chempop]

Phenomena (1985)

I drift more towards cheesy feel good 80s over horror so this was a great change of pace. I wasn't quite prepared for the last ¼, so yup I'm a little traumatized.

Seems Amazon Prime has a ton of these 70s-80s Argento style films.. I may check out some more but I think I should probably make it a weekend only thing as I'm a bit sensitive to gruesome visuals.

[NYN]

Why do people hate dubstep so much? I actually love it! So does Deadpool!

That's either a sad aphorism or the culmination of your accumulated experience as a whole. We are grateful, but don't stop there. Sell the script rights. Go big, get a following. Transcend the trope. Be somebody! Best of luck.

[Stevens]

Mortal Kombat

I go into any movie based on a game with zero expectations and was expecting this to be a complete dumpster fire. I was mildly surprised.

Best martial arts movie? No. Best video game movie? No. But a decent watch on a rainy Sunday. Would I watch it again? Also no, but might if I was really high.

Come to think if it, what are some movies based on games that weren't dog shit?

Also Illmanjs mentioned reggae and I have to give a shout out do the Grosse Point Blank soundtrack. That is top tier.

[xxx1993]

I still don’t mind it all that much...

[BIL]

Come to think if it, what are some movies based on games that weren't dog shit?

Does Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie count? :3 (genuine quality, if you've not seen it - fights convey crushing weight and explosive power, scenery is absorbingly detailed, story is characterful but sensibly lightweight - SFII aesthetic in a nutshell, battle choreography by Kazuyoshi Ishii and the late Andy Hug)

WA-TAAAAAAH

Spoiler

Sterling performance from Bryan Cranston as Fei Long ;-;7 Sadly that clip censored the RUDE LANGUAGE (should be "Fei Long - he's an asshole!") and undoubtedly CHUN SHOWER BOOBS too, but unrated has all the badness as God and Jesus intended.

Oh hell no

Spoiler

Otherwise, I'm drawing a blank. The very first Resident Evil is at least watchable. Some atmosphere and verve, if you can forgive the hideously dated/unintentionally hilarious Matrix influence. Paul WS Anderson's earlier Mortal Kombat is similarly tolerable in low doses. That's all I can come up with. Hardly original picks either. 3;

I'm still going with [REC], Neco z Alenky and The Raid as my favourite Videogame Movies. Will respectively delight fans of Resident Evil, Silent Hill, and Donkey Kong. I hear some like the Cube films along similar lines. I've not played the games they cite (PC point n' clicks where everything randomly kills you in exceedingly unfortunate ways), but I thought the first was entertaining enough.

[vol.2]

IMHO, Doom was watchable. Karl Urban is okay and the Rock was fun. There's some neat creature design, and I played a lot of Doom as a kid, so it was fun to see at least some kind of representation of it, even if it was forgettable.

[Searchlike]

Takashi Miike's Gyakuten Saiban/Ace Attorney was genuinely good I thought and I'm actually quite fond of the live action RE movies, Retribution in particular, but I'm not a Biohazard fan, outside of RE6. I'd argue the Paul W. S. Anderson directed films are lot more consistent in terms of style and themes than Capcom's own handling of the game franchise. I also really enjoy Anderson's love of symmetry and labyrinths.

[vol.2]

I went to the cinema and watched all of the RE movies (and even enjoyed them), but I'm not sure I would try to argue that they were "good" movies with anyone. They are "okay" movies, and fun enough to watch absentmindedly on a lazy weekend afternoon.

My personal favorite of them was Extinction. So make what you will of that.

[Searchlike]

They are way beyond okay IMO, the editing and compositions are consistenlty great throughout the saga and the action scenes are visually clear like a quality Hong Kong flick, though Final Chapter falters a bit in this respect.

Here's a good text on the Jovovich/Anderson collaboration:
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/lab ... -anderson/

[BIL]

I checked out of the RE films after the second's goofy Jill cosplayer (to be fair, Jill's RE3 outfit looks ridiculous in the game itself - my boy HUNK aka THE GRIM REAPER or MR. DEATH is the only RE character who appreciates biochemical warfare protocols ), but I do like Anderson's sense for videogamey deathmazes ala Event Horizon. Which isn't without its own flaws, but I find it enjoyable on roughly the same level as the first RE.

And tbh, the first Mortal Kombat. >_> I don't do guilty pleasures - fuck your guilt motherfucker! I WANNA RAWK - but I like watching these with company and lots of beer, they have a good balance of semi-intentional humour and upsetting carnage.

[vol.2]

No. Fuck that, I don't feel guilty about enjoying movies. But I don't necessarily feel that my enjoyment of a film is the primary metric of it's artistic merit. You want to be an populist extremist, fine, but that's not really how see things.

I'll read the essay later tonight, but I'm going in skeptical. The best HK films had more going on for them than stellar choreography.