VHS and Betamax You Have Recently Rented

[FLips]

Big

It's cute, it's charming and it's an easy watch, but it raises more questions than it answers. Instead of talking about how good the film was afterwards, it had us all discussing whether the woman is a paedophile or not and how she was expected to just live with herself afterwards knowing she had sex with a 13 year old in Tom Hanks' body.

[WyattSheepMask]

I went and saw No Other Choice again today. I know it’s only early February, but I honestly think that’s going to be my Film of the Year. 

[Hannibal Scorch]

Send Help Was a lot of fun. Definitely 

Spoiler

The right ending as well. I thought that prick was going to end up surviving and I was NOT ok with that.

Can’t wait to rewatch.

[Lorne Malvo]

Send Help - As fun as everybody has said, just a wild riotous time at the flicks. The boar and eye-gouging scenes were the highlights for me. If I had to nit-pick, I'd say the very last scene was maybe a little too cute and wrapped it all up in a bow too nicely, although you could also argue

Spoiler

she went mad on the island and her happy ending is just a wild fantasy - it definitely had more of a dreamlike artificial feel than the rest of the film.

But yeah, really good this. Nice to have you back, Sam Raimi!

My Father's Shadow - Two young boys accompany their father to Lagos as he attempts to get his wages paid during the Nigerian election crisis of 1993. I thought this was absolutely terrific. One of those where days later, certain images and scenes keep popping back up into my head. For the most part it's a somewhat naturalistic tender film, but there's a moment towards the end of this where I was absolutely terrified about a characters fate, much more scared than I have been watching any horror film of the past few years. Bonus points for 92/93 WWF getting a mention!

[organizedkaos]

Vulcanizadora I'm not sure I enjoyed watching it so much but it's hard to stop thinking about it. Some great filmmaking going on underneath the skuzzy metal outer sheen (there's a really quite beautiful shot using those snake indoor fireworks).  It's quite unnassuming yet obvious but the characters and moments feel really real which makes all the difficult stuff land hard. I think they've nailed whatever they were trying to achieve, I'm just not sure I like it The fact I feel compelled to post about it whereas the dozen other films I watched this year (that I probably liked more) got no mention speaks to.. something

[SaitoRyo]

Year of the Dragon

Mickey Rourke is the grizzled young New York cop looking to take down the Triads that are causing terror in New York's Chinatown during the mid-1980s. 

Five years after Heaven's Gate bombed, Michael Cimino returned with a film that is excessive, self-important and, quite possibly, racist, xenophobic and sexist. And yet, it is strangely watchable, because Cimino actually knew what he was doing half the time, even if he couldn't help but get in his own way. There are parts of it that look really, really good and it has an atmosphere about it, if nothing else.

Rourke is very good and believable in it, and pretty much carries the film. Ariane, a model who plays Rourke's love interest, is absolutely terrible, mind, and I'm not surprised her performance basically ended her acting career before it had a chance to start. A mixed bag overall and not something I'd be in a hurry to watch again. 

[theringmaster]

On 2/9/2026 at 8:13 AM, LaGoosh said:

If I Had Legs I Would Kick You

 

Somebody put on twitter this sounds like a Movie Troy McClure would star in and I now laugh every time i see that movie mentioned.

[deathrey]

The Wrecking Crew

I actually really enjoyed this. It gave me everything I wanted out of an action film, lots of fight scenes, a few guns, enough of a storyline to keep you engaged, the odd one liner that made me laugh out loud, a little bit of gore and Jason Momoa.  If you want something fun to pass two hours, I recommend it. Dave Batista really has made a great career trajectory and looks good now he has bulked down.

Edited February 12 by deathrey

[BomberPat]

The Howling II: Your Sister Is A Werewolf

I've always been slightly fascinated by this film, but I remembered very little of it. I had certainly not remembered that Jimmy Nail is inexplicably in it.

It's fucking dreadful, but at times endearingly so. Christopher Lee is the only actor putting a shift in, and even then barely. He plays an occult investigator, who crashes the funeral of a woman from the previous film, to tell her grieving brother (played by Reb Brown, of Space Mutiny, Yor: Hunter Of The Future, and the TV pilot of Captain America) that his sister was a werewolf. 

From there you get to what I really love about this movie. Despite an opening credit claiming it was based on the novel of Howling 2, it blatantly wasn't. Reb Brown's sister rises from her coffin, transformed into a werewolf, and Christopher Lee stakes her through the heart, because we all know that's how you kill werewolves. In order to track down the queen werewolf, our heroes have to travel to Transylvania, where they encounter suspicious locals. Once in Transylvania, the female journalist/love interest for Reb Brown pulls out a string of garlic to ward off evil from their room. What is very, very clear is that someone had a vampire screenplay knocking about, and then got the rights to the name Howling 2 and hastily turned it into a werewolf movie instead, but never really put more effort in than copy and replacing "vampire" for "werewolf". It's very funny.

Completely loses its way by the end, absolute bollocks, but I had fun watching it. Christopher Lee, his first day on set for Gremlins 2, apparently apologised to Joe Dante for having been in this movie at all, explaining, "I just hadn't done a werewolf picture before".

[Devon Malcolm]

The Howling is a weird franchise even by the standards of long-running horror series. Just almost no connection across any of the films. Feels like one of those mental Italian horror series where they're connected in name only and nobody gives a shit about trademarks.

[DavidB6937]

1 hour ago, Devon Malcolm said:

The Howling is a weird franchise even by the standards of long-running horror series. Just almost no connection across any of the films. Feels like one of those mental Italian horror series where they're connected in name only and nobody gives a shit about trademarks.

Honestly, that was one of the most frustrating things about being into horror when I was younger, and it was more difficult to seek a lot of stuff out. Trying to follow certain 'franchises' and managing to get a copy of something only to realise it literally had nothing to do whatsoever with the others! 

[SaitoRyo]

There's probably a really good documentary to be made about The Howling II, actually. Not only was it completely bonkers, but they filmed most of it in communist Czechoslovakia. There must be some stories to tell. 

[davertfnewman]

This is a really fun look at the Howling series:

 

[SaitoRyo]

Heat

Yes, last night I watched the classic crime thriller film Heat! From 1986 and starring Burt Reynolds, of course.

Alright, so it wasn't a classic and this was clearly a down period in Burt's career, but it wasn't totally worthless (if not a little sad). Reynolds plays an ex-mercenary bodyguard in Las Vegas and it's basically all about him having to deal with shady fuckers at night. Felt more like something that Charles Bronson would have starred in, not Reynolds.

There were apparently a handful of directors who worked on it, and it shows. Written by William Goldman, but it's far from his best work. It's also somewhat notorious for Burt breaking the jaw of one of the directors (Dick Richards), who then sued Burt and got half a mil.

Was later remasde as 'Wild Card' with Jason Statham.

[LaGoosh]

Primate 

I love the premise of a horror movie based on a rampaging rabies chimpanzee but this film was a dud. The monkey effects are great and there's maybe 2-3 decent gore moments but it was nowhere near as fun, mean and bonkers as a film with this premise should have been.