DVDs and Films You Have Watched Recently #2

[Egg Shen]

Just got another film on my retro rewatch done.

 

3) Saturn 3

A 1980 Sci-fi film starring Kirk Douglas, Farrah Fawcett & Harvey Keitel. There isn't a great deal of plot but I like it and I'd quite enjoy a modern day re-imagining of the film if I'm honest. The film starts when the unstable Benson (Keitel) murders a fellow pilot and steals his spot as the captain of a one man ship heading to Titan, Saturn's 3rd moon hence the title. Upon landing at the moonbase he meets his hosts, scientists Adam (Douglas) and Alex (Fawcett). Adam and Alex have been there 3 years alone with their dog and despite an age gap have become a couple. Benson takes an immediate interest in Alex and the fact she has never been to earth, he also announces he has brought the components to build an Android that will replace one of them, hinting it will be Adam. Adam realises his paradise with Alex is under threat and talks about murdering Benson to Alex. Meanwhile Benson continues to try lure Alex into bed and constructing the big robot called Hector. Using a head jack he uses his own thoughts to educate Hector's A.I., unfortunately this means he absorbs his obsession with Alex and his murderous impulses as he becomes more and more independent.

So basically an old bloke, a younger bloke and a big Android all wanna bang the same chick in outer space and none are above considering murder.

The main interest of the film is how cool the above sounds and possibly to see Keitel in space. The bad points are probably the low budget, Lew Grade financed this and 'Raise The Titanic' at the same time, as the latter went over budget the former had to have its budget cut to compensate. The SFX in the space scenes are laughable compared to Empire Strikes Back, this must have been where the budget was cut.

The acting is nothing of note, Keitel looks menacing but his lines are dubbed over and Grade ordered two violent scenes to be cut, in fact there's meant to be 20 minutes cut but I don't know if they'd improve the film, if anything the 83 minute runtime is enough.

The Android is pretty cool and the scenes of them running from him under the grating of the endless corridors not knowing where he is, is reminiscent of Alien but less tense. Not a great film but an interesting piece that I had fun watching again.

 

I have sampled the shit out of that movie. Cool film, and as has been said, Fawcett's tits are specTACular.

 

just been looking to buy that, ive been reading a Sci-Fi book about films that inspired by, and that were inspiration for Star Wars. That came free with Empire a couple of years back, its filled with old reviews, Saturn 3 was one of them.

 

The Last Starfighter is another movie i wanna get cause of the book.

[Hyperion]

Just got another film on my retro rewatch done.

 

3) Saturn 3

A 1980 Sci-fi film starring Kirk Douglas, Farrah Fawcett & Harvey Keitel. There isn't a great deal of plot but I like it and I'd quite enjoy a modern day re-imagining of the film if I'm honest. The film starts when the unstable Benson (Keitel) murders a fellow pilot and steals his spot as the captain of a one man ship heading to Titan, Saturn's 3rd moon hence the title. Upon landing at the moonbase he meets his hosts, scientists Adam (Douglas) and Alex (Fawcett). Adam and Alex have been there 3 years alone with their dog and despite an age gap have become a couple. Benson takes an immediate interest in Alex and the fact she has never been to earth, he also announces he has brought the components to build an Android that will replace one of them, hinting it will be Adam. Adam realises his paradise with Alex is under threat and talks about murdering Benson to Alex. Meanwhile Benson continues to try lure Alex into bed and constructing the big robot called Hector. Using a head jack he uses his own thoughts to educate Hector's A.I., unfortunately this means he absorbs his obsession with Alex and his murderous impulses as he becomes more and more independent.

So basically an old bloke, a younger bloke and a big Android all wanna bang the same chick in outer space and none are above considering murder.

The main interest of the film is how cool the above sounds and possibly to see Keitel in space. The bad points are probably the low budget, Lew Grade financed this and 'Raise The Titanic' at the same time, as the latter went over budget the former had to have its budget cut to compensate. The SFX in the space scenes are laughable compared to Empire Strikes Back, this must have been where the budget was cut.

The acting is nothing of note, Keitel looks menacing but his lines are dubbed over and Grade ordered two violent scenes to be cut, in fact there's meant to be 20 minutes cut but I don't know if they'd improve the film, if anything the 83 minute runtime is enough.

The Android is pretty cool and the scenes of them running from him under the grating of the endless corridors not knowing where he is, is reminiscent of Alien but less tense. Not a great film but an interesting piece that I had fun watching again.

 

I have sampled the shit out of that movie. Cool film, and as has been said, Fawcett's tits are specTACular.

 

just been looking to buy that, ive been reading a Sci-Fi book about films that inspired by, and that were inspiration for Star Wars. That came free with Empire a couple of years back, its filled with old reviews, Saturn 3 was one of them.

 

The Last Starfighter is another movie i wanna get cause of the book.

Sounds interesting, films like Star Wars, Indiana Jones & Mad Max 2 definitely inspired lots of movies, good and bad.

 

The Last Starfighter is great fun, I went to see it at cinema as a kid, the alien assassins were pretty scary to my young eyes. And to this day me and my mate still regularly do impressions of the "We die" scene. Pretty much a movie landmark in CGI too. Might give that a Download one day as I only have it on VHS at the moment.

[Murtz]

A few great looking films coming out in the next few months;

 

Pirates 4

Hangover 2

X Men First Class

Bridesmaids

Kung Fu Panda 2!

Green Lantern

 

Looking forward to all of them!

[Stephanie]

Saw Bridesmaids this weekend. I thought it was hilarious. It did drag on a bit though, it was over 2 hours long.

[Harvey Dent]

Just got back from On Stranger Tides, it was decent and entertaining enough. Nothing great, but a solid improvement on the mess that was At World's End. The newer characters, bar Penelope Cruz's Angelica, tend to be a little one dimensional and you don't really care about them. Even Blackbeard lacks the presence of Davy Jones and never really feels like an intimidating villain. Depp himself is brilliant again as Jack Sparrow, plenty of good stuff in there if you like him in the role. The biggest flaw is it just seems to carry on in the same pace through the entire duration, there's no ups and downs, it just follows a straight line until the end. So yeah, overall good enough for a watch, but hardly brilliant.

[David]

I watched Vanishing on 7th street. It was weird. A good idea, but very badly executed.

 

By the end I wanted everyone to die.

[chokeout]

I watched Vanishing on 7th street. It was weird. A good idea, but very badly executed.

 

By the end I wanted everyone to die.

 

I watched that a few weeks ago, would have worked a lot better as a 1 hour Twilight Zone/Outer Limit type episode. Plus the Day to Night conversion was shocking on it and really distracting

[GlennCullen]

I watched Vanishing on 7th street. It was weird. A good idea, but very badly executed.

 

By the end I wanted everyone to die.

 

Yeah I had heard good things about that, but wasn't too impressed.

[David]

I also watched a movie called Ink, which is excellent though. I really recommend it.

[CuckedByMenry]

I finally got round to watching Australian horror The Loved Ones after seeing it hyped by a few posters on here. Definitely one of the best horrors I've seen in recent years, and one of very few films where I wanted to see more due to being good as opposed to unfulfilling. Brilliant stuff.

[Stephanie]

Saw Pirates 4 this weekend. It was a bit meh... Watchable and fun in parts. This franchise has passed it's sell by date though, in my opinion.

[Green]

I finally got round to watching Australian horror The Loved Ones after seeing it hyped by a few posters on here. Definitely one of the best horrors I've seen in recent years, and one of very few films where I wanted to see more due to being good as opposed to unfulfilling. Brilliant stuff.

Good man, more people need to see this. One of the most entertaining and original horror attempts in years, and I'd argue the best since The Descent...maybe not quite AS good as that though. The Descent is fucking great.

[The Reverend]

Saw Blitz this weekend. It was ok - just reminded me of an ITV drama. Seen it all before really. Most surprising was why Statham was in it. At first you think it could all go a bit Dirty Harry but then it doesn't. With no real action it just shows up that he can't really act. There are some nice little one liners in it. Most entertaining for me though were the bunch of old folks in the Cineworld Ipswich who walked out after about 30 mins. Yep - it wasn't the Blitz they were thinking of obviously!

[Hyperion]

Just knocked out two films I've not seen before.

 

Letters From Iwo Jima

While I saw the companion piece Flags Of Our Fathers a year ago, I put off seeing this version of the same battle but from the Japanese perspective until now, maybe cause it seems less interesting on the surface, its about "the enemy" and has no big names in it outside of Ken Watanabe. Upon recently re-watching The Pacific series and FOOF, I thought I better watch this finally. And I'm very impressed with it, its slightly better than the film of the American side of the story, Clint Eastwood has made a great film here. Despite its 140min running time and being subtitled, it seems to fly by. As I'm quite interested in WWII and can lose hours on Wiki reading about it, I was riveted by the story which is pretty much historically accurate. Usually in the battles of the Pacific on film the Japanese are portrayed one dimensionally or inaccurately but this one gives you great characters that you can feel for and respect without portraying the American Marines as the villains so to speak, there is good and evil on both sides.

Watanabe plays General Kuribayashi who is put in charge of the men at Iwo Jima, he spent several years in the US before the war and this leads some officers under his command to think he's an American sympathiser when he rubs them up the wrong way by totally changing the Islands fortifications before the Marines arrive. Unlike some of his officers, he doesn't believe in wasting men with honourable suicides instead of a tactical retreat or in needless Banzai attacks. The story follows him and the army under his command right down to the lowly Saigo who was forced to go fight and leave his wife. Without resupplies of food or ammo and no air support or help from the now decimated Japanese fleet, its up to Kuribayashi and his men to hold Iwo Jima as long as possible knowing its a hopeless situation.

Its a great film and I'm glad I took the time to finally watch it. You won't be rooting for the Japanese to kill Marines but you will see them in a more human light and gain a bit of sympathy and respect for some of them and the situation they were put in whether they liked it or not.

 

 

Rampage

Yes its a Uwe Boll movie, the first and probably last of his films I'll ever watch. I always think Brendan Fletcher has a Daniel Bryan look about him when he was in The Pacific, I looked him up on IMDB and this films DVD sleeve caught my eye, I had a closer look and despite it being a Uwe Boll movie it had a decent rating and people seemed to think it'd be given a fair shake if his name wasn't on it. It sounded intriguing so I instantly downloaded it to watch.

Fletcher plays Bill, a 23 year old loser who's disgruntled with every aspect of his life, so donning a full suit of body armour that he's slowly built in the basement, some bombs and a couple of Sub-machine guns, he goes on a massive killing spree through the local town but is there a method to his madness.

I think at worst its a violent columbine massacre type wank fantasy but at best a low budget film that's very watchable (albeit disturbing) and unpredictable. You don't know how to feel about Bill at first but as it goes on you'll quickly make your mind up. I did not like the editing of the film, it lost it some tension I felt, nor did I feel there was any message here other than the world's a violent place and shit like this does happen. While it seems to take ideas from the excellent 'Falling Down' with Michael Douglas and some real life events it has enough originality to not feel like a total rip off. I do worry that some mentals will watch this and think its a great idea. All said and done it was an okay 90 minute time passer that kept me interested. Oh and Max Headroom is his dad. Trailer to help you to make your own mind up if you want to see it or not.

[patiirc]

Watched Inglourious Basterds over the weekend. Basically I thought it was okay, and nothing more. Yes there are some great performances in it. but it left us feeling a little cold and not drawn in.

 

I think that's much to do with with Christopher Waltz basically being a pantomime villain. I know its set in World War 2 and the accuracy goes out the window somewhat, but all I kept being reminded of is Pulp Fiction set in World War II. Yes the story is different, but it felt the same. I know its the same director, but there was an interchangability about it which soured the experience

 

Also tried watching Zodiac over the weekend. Seems a good, well made film, I liked Robert Downey Jr and The Columbo-esque detective. It just didnt connect and found I was wandering away from it well before it was due to finish. Perhaps that's something that I need to be in the mood for to watch