VHS and Betamax You Have Recently Rented

[Lorne Malvo]

The Iron Maiden scene is one of my scenes of the year.

I think it's a really strong series overall though. I've even got time for 28 Weeks Later.

Preferred Bone Temple to 28 Years if anything as the island stuff in the former took up too much time to the point I was bored of it. It really picked up when it became 'Jodie Comer and her son go on an adventure'. 

[SuperBacon]

3 hours ago, Devon Malcolm said:

The first one was great, I wasn't as keen on the second. But by and large she's in duds. Could just be one of those actors who just enjoys working and chooses based on people rather than scripts, who knows. But she could have been a huge star by now. She's always really good.

I enjoyed the Babysitter films and even though I didn't particularly care for Borderline, she was great in that as well.

Would she be great just standing there and reading the phone book out? Well yes.

[tiger_rick]

Got forced to watch "People we meet on vaction" and it was actually alright. Bit corny and predictable as it neared the inevitable ending but a decent enough chick-flick told through flashbacks and shot in some great places. I've been to a few too which made it fun spotting some places we've visited.

Emily Bader is lovely. She's gonna play Mia Hamm in a film about the US World Cup win in 1999. She actually played too so great bit of casting!

[Mr_Danger]

 

13 minutes ago, SuperBacon said:

I enjoyed the Babysitter films and even though I didn't particularly care for Borderline, she was great in that as well.

Would she be great just standing there and reading the phone book out? Well yes.

My lazy brain has decided that because she’s Australian and bares similarities in looks and age to Margot Robbie she only gets offered the roles Robbie turns down. Needs to get a good comedy under her belt as she always comes across as having a good wit in interviews and she shows a bit in Over Your Dead Body which probably should have been a bit more of a twisted romantic comedy as her and Siegel would have suited that better.

[LaGoosh]

Resident Evil - probably the most fun I've had with a film in ages. Perfect balance of scares and laughs. A very well made film.

I love how it perfectly captured the feeling of playing a horror game and translated it into something that felt like a real film.

[JLM]

Hope

Spoiler

I’m not at all surprised that the reviews for this are all over the place but I had a good time with it. I liked the overall feeling of characters being utterly out of their depth and bungling through this scenario, sometimes pulling off moments of brilliance but mostly fucking up and relying on blind luck. Walking the line between sci fi action and farce. At times the tone of the action reminded me of No Other Choice. It’s nowhere near as good as that movie, but I like how it acknowledges that humans reduced to primal stabbing and shooting for their lives is undeniably silly and messy. Most humans would be ludicrously inept in that scenario and it’s fun to me when movies highlight this. 

I loved the little trucks full of local folks going to war and acting like they’re the heroes of a sci fi action movie only to realise they’re not remotely equipped to be sci fi action heroes. Doomsday preppers finally getting the moment they trained for, showing undeniable courage and bravery but getting fucked up in an entirely predictable way as most people would in this scenario. I was rooting for the team as a whole because they were trying their best in an unfathomable circumstance and were getting it so wrong that any small victory felt triumphant. 
 
The stunt work and action choreography were fantastic at times. I thought the whole sequence of the cop pursuing the thing through the ransacked town was brilliant, with some incredible set designs and an infectious chaotic energy to it all. I also loved the practical effects for the autopsy scenes, and again how improvised and amateur that all felt. The supposed expert having to resort to a chainsaw to open up the body and then just grabbing handfuls of shit and basically concluding “I dunno”. 

The running gag about wise old veteran/master raconteur Mr. Hae Sul was very well done, where first someone invokes his name to try and sell their bullshit story, then we get a hilarious recounting of a real but unlikely event from the man himself, then later the seal of approval on said story from another local who knows the reputation of the man. 
 

The CGI is a problem. It’s a big one. I’m glad I didn’t see it in IMAX, and as much as I loved the cop chasing it through the town sequence, the reveal of the extremely ropey looking monster definitely sucked the air out of the room. However, for me personally the film had generated enough good will and had enough pace and energy and humour peppered throughout that I was able to get past it. I fully understand if people can’t because it is really bad, but it wasn’t enough to tank the movie for me. 
 

Throwing in a cliffhanger/non-ending after such a long run time was certainly a bold choice! I can’t really defend that, and again I think I’d just enjoyed the ride as a whole enough that it didn’t completely sour the film for me. I bloody loved the car chase sequence preceding it and I guess that carried the ending over the line in my mind.  Again I wouldn’t really argue with someone who considers it a deal breaker, but I know the director has a sequel written for it and I hope he gets to make it as I would happily join these characters for another whacky adventure. 

 

 

 

[Mr_Danger]

11 hours ago, LaGoosh said:

Resident Evil - probably the most fun I've had with a film in ages. Perfect balance of scares and laughs. A very well made film.

I love how it perfectly captured the feeling of playing a horror game and translated it into something that felt like a real film.

Hearing this a lot and it’s all they really need to do with all these adaptations. Game to film is such a hard adaptation to pull off, harder than book to film because the way games are consumed are so much more interactive and personal than any other medium. I’m seeing it this week and whilst I’ll probably be disappointed if Paul Walter Hauser isn’t at least called Barry there’s nothing about a Resident Evil game story that needs to be said in film. As shit as they are the Paul Anderson films did a fine job of adapting those terrible stories.

Edited Friday at 05:51 PM by Mr_Danger

[Devon Malcolm]

Digger

I went to see this for Tom and Tom only because Inarritu is such a boring director. The performances make it somewhat bearable (John Goodman is brilliant, too) but it's Inarritu's usual over-indulgent, pretentious bullshit otherwise. Cruise is fantastic - the monologue scene one of the best of his career. He deserved it to be in something that people will want to see.

Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom

The Aardman lads never miss. Very funny as ever. Never stop making these.

Faces of Death

Probably the disappointment of the year. Goldhaber's first two films (Cam and How to Blow Up a Pipeline) were superb. This is absolute shite. Are you telling us social media is bad? Why didn't someone tell us sooner! Barbie Ferreira innocent, Dacre Montgomery guilty of all charges.

Mother of Flies

The Adams family keep making these fun low budget folk horror films and I hope one day a company steps in and gives them a few million dollars to make something. They deserve it. Not their best but still a good time.

MadS

Mental French 'one shot' take on the zombie film. Starts enjoyable, gets progressively more insane as it goes on. Had a great time with this considering I expected it to be a drug bore film.

The Get Out

Russell Crowe's lazy era is running out of steam. This was fucking shit.

Cure

Ari Aster said this might be the greatest film ever made and he's an idiot but he might have been right for once. The benchmark for all serial killer films. A masterpiece.

Edited Friday at 07:03 PM by Devon Malcolm

[Merzbow]

15 hours ago, Devon Malcolm said:

Cure

Ari Aster said this might be the greatest film ever made and he's an idiot but he might have been right for once. The benchmark for all serial killer films. A masterpiece.

Watched it for the first time a few years back and kicked myself for not seeing it sooner, it didn't fit the mold of the J-Horror I was into back in the day and would have likely gone over my head (still did to a point) but yeah, masterpiece. 

15 hours ago, Devon Malcolm said:

Faces of Death

Probably the disappointment of the year. Goldhaber's first two films (Cam and How to Blow Up a Pipeline) were superb. This is absolute shite. Are you telling us social media is bad? Why didn't someone tell us sooner! Barbie Ferreira innocent, Dacre Montgomery guilty of all charges.

Didn't even realize it was Goldhaber, doubly disappointing now and might even take another half a star from my Letterboxd review.

[hallicks]

15 hours ago, Devon Malcolm said:

Digger

I went to see this for Tom and Tom only because Inarritu is such a boring director. The performances make it somewhat bearable (John Goodman is brilliant, too) but it's Inarritu's usual over-indulgent, pretentious bullshit otherwise. Cruise is fantastic - the monologue scene one of the best of his career. He deserved it to be in something that people will want to see.

Couldn’t get on board with it at all. Apparently it’s a black comedy, but I laughed about 3 times and I was praying for the end after about 10 minutes. I’m sure there will be people that say it’s amazing, but it felt like a film made for filmmakers and nobody else. Reminded me of Amsterdam, big name cast, looks brilliant, but zero heart. 

15 hours ago, Devon Malcolm said:

Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom

The Aardman lads never miss. Very funny as ever. Never stop making these.

Fantastic film. Laugh out loud all the way through. Loved it. 

[LaGoosh]

Speak No Evil - the original one, not the James Macavoy one. Starts off very well and as an interesting look at a horror movie about people being too polite to stand up to weird and passive aggressive behaviour but the second half is boring and predictable and all feels rather pointless. A nasty little film that has way less to say than it thinks it does.

[Devon Malcolm]

18 minutes ago, LaGoosh said:

Speak No Evil - the original one, not the James Macavoy one. Starts off very well and as an interesting look at a horror movie about people being too polite to stand up to weird and passive aggressive behaviour but the second half is boring and predictable and all feels rather pointless. A nasty little film that has way less to say than it thinks it does.

This was my experience as well. A great idea that loses confidence in itself.

The remake has Mackenzie Davis in it so I have to watch it.

[Hannibal Scorch]

I dug Digger! I had no idea about anything to do with the film (other than the transformation of Tom Cruise), but I thought it was pretty funny then when the twists revealed themselves. I think it’s message of class and how the rich can always control the narrative to be something worth telling, even though its message won’t be heard. Really pleasantly surprised by it and I feel the critical reception it’s got is the one One Battle After Another deserved.

Give Riz Ahmed the Oscar though.