8/10. Striking.

rango

Silent Hill (5/10)

A real missed opportunity. Starts off OK but soon descends into a kind of adult Children of the Corn made by a Marilyn Manson fan.

8/10

I saw a Zombie short film called I Love Sarah Jane yesterday. It was quite good actually.
http://vimeo.com/5124137
Enjoy!

saw this starting on the tv listings as i was killing time waiting for the western union to open haha

7/10

The Road (8/10)

Pretty hard to fault this on any level, but it isn't something I'm likely to want to watch again in a hurry.

Very good. But Robert could do better. Excellent cast, Jim Fahey. Yeah... ahh Lost.



Not a whole lot of substance, could have been little more compelling.

Taxi Driver
King Kong (1933)

Really loved this film. I feel it didn't get the recognition it deserves as being a hard core apocalypse film. In and out of theaters and no one talks about it. Then again, I'm a huge John Hillcoat fan. For a truly unnerving experience, see his "Ghosts.... of the Civil Dead" or "The Proposition" which is one of the most horrific westerns ever made!

Super- A good dark comedy. It has its own thing going, but at the same time it reminded me a lot of "Defendor", and that movie came out first, so I'm not sure this was the better film.

I think the fact it was a genre film was what stood in the way of that recognition. That and the fact it wasn't made in Europe. I'm sure, had it been made in Russia or Scandinavia, that the critics would've salivated over it far more than they did.

I didn't know Hillcoat made Ghosts of the Civil Dead but it makes perfect sense now you mention it. I can't believe I still haven't seen The Proposition.

The Call of Cthulhu (7/10)

A real oddity. Although made in 2005 it looks like an early silent film. Bits of it are very similar to the island scenes in the original King Kong. Not really recommendable to anyone but diehard Lovecraft/Cthulhu devotees, who've probably already seen it anyway.


Dagon (6/10)

On a bit of a Lovecraft kick at the moment. Not a great film, as such, but it's a great story.

"Sunset Boulevard" - it was on TCM last night.

So good on so many levels.

 

WHILE WATCHING IT: 8/10

Saying this is Smith's best film maybe isn't saying much, depending on how you feel about him. Seriously, after a bunch of movies he finally figured out a camera can tell a story, and that there's such a thing as artful editing. Aside from a few long-winded, self-indulgent, not-as-clever-as-Smith-thinks speeches, things fly by with energy and unpredictability. Emotions are generated, then fucked with. No character is safe. And John Goodman offers more evidence that he's one of the finest actors out there. Two or three really good bits of dialogue.

AFTER THE MOVIE ENDS AND I THOUGHT ABOUT IT: 4/10. Really, this is stupid shit. Shot with hand-held cameras to evoke a "realistic" look, but the script is riddled with plot holes, huge coincidences, and just plain malarky. It's paranoid, and its ultimate point that "religious extremism is bad" is sorta fucking obvious at this point. Smith acted for years like this is a film he HAD to make, but why? It's loosely based on Rev. "God hates fags" Phelps, one of the most hated men in America, and this over-the-top representation seems like overkill.

As far as technique goes, I stand by the statement that this is Smith's best film. Of course, shit director that he is, now that he's figured out how to make a film he's announced his retirement.

wasn't the video game "Clock Tower" based off this?

Its THE gritty Western of modern ear.

Currently watching...



Comedies honestly don't get much better than this. I can watch this film a thousand times over, without even taking a break, and still chortle violently at every gag.

The sequels are completely lacking of this charm however.

Yet moer Lovecraft ...






Necronomicon (3/10)

A pretty boring adaptation which not even David Warner can save.






From Beyond (6/10)

I can't quite put my finger on what it is but there's something about a lot of mid 80s US horror that I really don't like. Whatever it is it's a shame because actors like Jeffrey Combs are fantastic and given better films to star in he could've been the new Peter Cushing. Oh well. 4 for the film, an extra 2 for Combs.

the rubbery cheesy effects in the Gordon stuff would make me subtract 2 more.
Alien just so much better.

Latest for me was original version of Insomnia with Stellan Skarsgård. Sooo much better than the remake. Other than as a cash cow, why does Hollywuud do this?

Cloverfield (7/10)

If they could've ditched the whole home movie idea and given just a bit more thought to the storyline, this would've been utterly amazing.

Paranormal Activity (7/10)

I don't usually expect a horror film to actually scare me but this really did.

It definitely has a Blair Witch feel to it, but rather than having that film's more home movie style, PA has this ignenious and really effective way of using faux-cctv footage. Hard to explain why this adds to the suspense but it definitely does. For me, anyway. Bits of it are really eerie.

What did you think of Mullholland Dr.?

Yeah, I have to agree about Mullholland Dr. The scene in the theatre is one of my favourite film moments ever. It's interesting how so many of his films have those kind of musical 'time out' scenes, 'In Heaven' in Eraserhead, 'In Dreams' in Blue Velvet, 'Love Me Tender' in Wild at Heart, 'Chorando' in MD, etc. They've become a kind of Lynch signature.

Yeah, i must say, paranormal activity freaked me out like no other horror film. i dont know why, but i was really scared, even after the film. there is something about ghosts, and the way that the film was done that just really scared me.

Here's a Hammer movie from the early 1970's, about an incestual brother and sister, and their insane father. Oh, and I think it has the old guy from "A Clockwork Orange". Not too bad, not too great, but not too bad.

Twilight (well mostly by curiosity because of Kristen Stewart and Ashley Greene good looks... :o). That didn't save the film from its cheesiness :D

Skyline (5/10)

Enjoyable enough but not much more than a fairly run of the mill merging of Cloverfield, ID4 and Spielberg's War of the Worlds. A nice apocalyptic ending, though.

SRSLY??? I thought it was terrible. I mean, I understand fear is a personal thing so whatever scares you scares you. But I found the acting so shit that I had trouble believing anything that happened.

agreed. It is a perfect film to me.

Troll Hunter- This is one odd movie. Its much more in line with "District 9" then something like "Cloverfield", and its pretty enjoyable.

I never picked up on the bad acting. I found the main guy really irritating but I suppose I put that down more to his character than the actor himself. And I thought the main woman was pretty good - although as a character, she obviously should've dumped her boyfriend the second he brought home the ouija board.

Also, although I'm not sure it was intentional, bits of it were quite funny, like the psychic detective who gets freaked out and just leaves them stranded. But the actual ghost bits did really scare me.

I just watched "Thor". It made me feel skinny and weak (and I weigh 178 pounds).

Recently saw a movie called "Jägarna 2" on the cinema..don't know how big it is in other countries..but guess it's called "The hunters 2" or something overseas?

it was really good.