What movie did you watch today?

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Spartan
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Post by Spartan »

i think the way the film was marketed as a dumb action b-movie throwback was what threw me off, because it's a lot more than that. not knowing much about the real events and it being spliced with OTT asian mysticism, some of it went completely over my head. Kept asking myself were those borks really fucking ninjas or what?

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a lot of reviews said that to get most out of this you need to be familiar with the history of the real person and the events that transpired, that's another reason why i was kinda worried
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Post by Random Sample »

13 Assassins - 9/10 - Fucking great in every aspect. Can't really say a bad thing about it. Really surprised that Miike could make a period samurai movie that good. Everyone should watch it.

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Post by drizzle »

miike rarely gets credit for this because of his batshit rep, but he's actually tremendously talented at just making straight up normal movies without hermaphrodites shooting vagina darts at baloons. dude's got rocksolid fundamental technical chops like whoa
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Post by Random Sample »

Yeah I know that he is capable of some incredible stuff. He just went so far out there for a while, that I didn't think he would make it back to making good solid movies without vagina darts.

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Post by Dan »

Here's what I watched this week:

Beginners (2010) - This film is pretty much told in flashback form, though it takes place in 2003. Itג€™s about a guy who begins a relationship with a woman he meets at a costume party. Throughout the film it flashes back a few years prior to when his 75-year-old father came out as a gay man 4 years after his wife had passed. Itג€™s also discovered that the father has terminal cancer. So as we see the beginnings of this mans relationship in 2003, weג€™re also brought back to his fathers beginnings.
The father/son relationship seemed very genuine. There werenג€™t any hokey stereotypical gay jokes. The father didnג€™t suddenly become flamboyant and add a lisp. It all seemed very real. Supposedly itג€™s based on director, Mike Millsג€™ real life. Apparently his father came out late in life.
The flashbacks happened a little too much and at one point got a little confusing. Still, I ended up liking this a lot.

Night Train to Munich (1940) - Nazi spy movie about a father and daughter attempting to flee the Naziג€™s and be reunited.
This was all about disguises, deception, and action.
Very good!

High Sierra (1941) - Humphrey Bogart plays a pardoned bank robber, who upon being released from prison, suddenly is hired to lead a crew to rob a safe in a fancy hotel in the Sierra Mountains.
I liked it.

She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) - The second film in John Fordג€™s cavalry trilogy, the first being 1948ג€™s Fort Apache. This isnג€™t necessarily a sequel, as the story isnג€™t continued and the characters are different. It gets a little confusing when it gets to the 3rd film, which I watched after this, so Iג€™ll explain in the next review.
This is a color film and looked extremely sharp. John Wayne plays a cavalry General days before he is set to retire. The Indians have planned a massive attack, so with his days in charge coming to an end, he must lead his troops into battle.
The Duke was aged to look 60 and it came off pretty well. I thought this was really good.

Rio Grande (1950) - The 3rd film in the cavalry trilogy. It has nothing to do with the previous two, but John Wayne uses the same name as he did in the first one, Fort Apache. Also, 2 characters from She Wore a Yellow Ribbon return using the same names, but their ranks in this film are much lower.
This film is also in black & white, unlike the last.
John Wayne once again is in charge, but heג€™s not on the verge of retiring. In this, his 15-year-old son, whom he hasnג€™t seen in 15 years, unexpectedly is sent to serve in Wayneג€™s troop. The boys mother also shows up in hopes to bring her son home.
Once again itג€™s another battle against Indians. Lots of action. I liked it, but not as much as the first 2 in the trilogy.

The Broadway Melody (1929) - I only watched this because it was the oldest Best Picture winner that I hadnג€™t seen. Trying to see as many as I can.

Dodge City (1939) - A color film starring Erroll Flynn as a man who appoints himself as sheriff in a wild west town.
This was really cool with great action. The only downside was Flynn. Dodge City is a tough city with bad asses everywhere you look, but Flynnג€™s demeanor is too soft to be believable.
Still, I enjoyed it.

The Paradine Case (1947) - Kind of a lackluster Hitchcock film. Gregory Peck plays a married lawyer who is defending a beautiful woman, whom he begins falling for, that is accused of poisoning her blind husband.

Lost Horizon (1937) - This was like watching the first season of Lost minus the smoke monster and polar bears.
An Englishman is sent to China to free several white people as a revolution is set to begin. When he boards his plane with his group of freed passengers, they discover their plane has been hijacked and traveling in the opposite direction of where theyג€™re supposed to be going. Suddenly the plane crashes and only the pilot is killed. A group of porters rescues the passengers and brings them to this Utopian city, hidden deep in the mountains, known as Shangri-La.
Shangri-La is a peaceful place where no one seems to age and no one can leave either.
The leader of the passengers finds out this plane crash was not an accident, he was chosen to be there, meanwhile, the rest of the group want to get away.
Obviously this film had a huge influence on Lost. It was really good.

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Post by darkwingduck »

Dan wrote:Night Train to Munich (1940) - Nazi spy movie about a father and daughter attempting to flee the Naziג€™s and be reunited.
This was all about disguises, deception, and action.
Very good!
LOVED NIGHT TRAIN!!!


PARKING LOT MOVIE. 8/10 great slice of life doc depicting a parking lot owner and his rag tag bunch of employees that operate a parking lot. Some of these guys are absolute geniuses. others, not so much. def. check it out. I had it in my instant que on netflix.

SHUTTER ISLAND. 7/10 i dont know, im on the fence with this one. I really dug the overall look/feel. Leo kicked ass in this. Cant really say that it felt like a scorcesse movie tho. i think after a repeat view, i may warm up to it more, but yeah, i was entertained.

SAMURAI REBELLION. 10/10. ok. i admit, when i first saw this i was blown-away and i still am. NAKADAI is fucking ILL. dude is such a level headed actor. Movie has got me looking to find more samurai flics to obsess over.

HOBO W/ A SHOTGUN. 10 :rockout: out of 10. Fuck yeah! Loved everything about this movie. Good to see R. Hauers still got it. The LM scene was fucking tits!!! And the heavily armored twins of death kicked so much ass it was almost too good to be true. Would love to find grindhouse movies that inspired this instant classic. Spartan...?

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Post by Spartan »

I dunno DW, still got a few weeks before I see it. Judging by the trailers, it reminded me a lot of the Death Wish movies (particularly part 3) and some of The Exterminator, so I'm guessing 70's era and early 80's vigilante movies are the way to go. The likes of Vigilante, Ms 45 and Class of 1984 for sure would also be a good start.

Blood Mania (1970)
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Very misleading title, this was anything but bloody until it's fairly underwhelming conclusion. Essentially a drive-in erotic thriller almost played out like a daytime soap opera but with a healthy amount of sleaze and frenetic wah wah guitars. The plot revolves around a murderous milf played by Maria De Aragon murdering her father to inherit everything. There's a blackmail sub-plot thrown in that the film's douchey male protagonist tries to overcome and hence his involvement with De Aragon. Strange film, without the sleaze this would pass as an episode of Murder She Wrote or some shit. It's a pretty mediocre film but I quite enjoyed it for what it was. For the record, Maria De Aragon went on to play the character Greedo in Star Wars. I feel like Dozer for saying this, but yeah I would fuck Greedo knowing it's her under all that make-up.

Don't Open Till Christmas (1984)
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Another slasher by trash producer Dick Randall (Pieces & Slaughter High) and perhaps the most problematic of the lot. It took two years and three directors to make this botched film and it's pretty poor. DOTC does have some redeeming qualities however, there's an obscene amount of unintentional hilarity that had me laughing in disbelief. So the victims in this London set slasher are wasted drunk middle aged men dressed in Santa Claus outfits who come to a gory demise, one of which gets his dick cut off at a urinal, another gets a meat cleaver in the face while Caroline Munro (looking sexy as fuck but can't sing for shit) appeared in a cameo as herself and performed a forgettable pop ditty. There's some great sleaze in this plus a fair bit of gore but overall it wasn't much of an engaging film. Real bottom of the barrel stuff, makes Silent Night, Deadly Night look like JC's Halloween.

Also watched but have written about before:

Trick R Treat - Better and better with each viewing. Very underrated film in my book. Sam has got to be one of the best horror characters in recent years.
Zombie - Recent discussion in the Horror Movie thread had me watching this again. Fulci lives!

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Post by Tommy Bunz »

Samurai Rebellion is probably as good as any of Kurosawa's samurai films outside of Seven Samurai. Huge fan.

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Post by drizzle »

darkwingduck wrote:
HOBO W/ A SHOTGUN. 10 :rockout: out of 10. Fuck yeah! Loved everything about this movie. Good to see R. Hauers still got it. The LM scene was fucking tits!!! And the heavily armored twins of death kicked so much ass it was almost too good to be true. Would love to find grindhouse movies that inspired this instant classic. Spartan...?
i was at a QA with the director after the movie premiered in ny, he said there were no specific movies he drew on, just the general spirit of late 70s and 80s exploitation. Carpenter's direction style was the only thing he tried to explicitly emulate

his next project is a kungfu movie inspired by story of ricky, chew on that for a sec...
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Post by Spartan »

Rituals - Got round to watching my Code Red DVD of this obscure gem last night. Other than some obvious print damage and scratches, they've still done an amazing job cleaning this neglected film.

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Post by Sucka Ducka »

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The writer-director team behind 'Saw' and the filmmakers of 'Paranormal Activity' redefine the haunted house genre in 'Insidious.' This horror film is the terrifying story of a family who shortly after moving discover that dark spirits have possessed their home and that their son has inexplicably fallen into a coma. Trying to escape the haunting and save their son, they move again only to discover that it was not their house that was haunted.
Watched this and although I love horror but didn't really dig Saw and hated Paranormal Activity, I thought this was worth a watch. A little corny, but entertaining.

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Post by RacquetballGangsta »

The Man Who Fell To Earth - 8/10

really loved this. only complaint is it was too long really, didnt need to see bowie or rip torn's gimos but the pretty nice amount of tits makes up for it...awesome music too. watching movies like this sometimes makes me wish i did drugs..then i wouldve probably enjoyed it a lot more.
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Post by drizzle »

u caught the forum screening? i keep meaning to go but probably will end up missing it
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Post by Spartan »

Cold Fish (2010)
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Fucking awesome serial killer themed black comedy. The finale was absolutely brutal.

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Post by RacquetballGangsta »

drizzle wrote:u caught the forum screening? i keep meaning to go but probably will end up missing it
some chick from the movie was supposed to introduce the film, i think, but it didnt happen
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Ironclad (2011)
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Solid hack and slash siege movie set in the medieval era. I honestly don't know what is fact or fiction in this, I don't remember anything of this post-Magna Carta shit when I studied medieval history. What I do know, is that James Purefoy was a real fucking badass templar fighting against King John played brilliantly by Paul Giamatti and his army of Danish mercs. This was a really good action film, savagely brutal at times, but the romance subplot annoyed the shit out of me - it just slowed the pace down. Still, this still felt like a man's film with plenty of blood and hacking to appease my tastes plus I love all this medieval stuff. The shitty distribution might qualify this as an overlooked film so it's worth checking out.

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Post by drizzle »

the blade - even though i've owned it and watched multiple times in the last 10 years, it still blew my mind on the big screen. aboslutely incredible despite the fact that it has maybe the worst script ever, and the shitty translation did it no favors either
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Season Of The Witch (2010)
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Despite all the negative reviews, I'm so glad I finally watched this as it was entertaining from start to finish. Cage might have been ridiculously miscast here and Stephen Graham suddenly talking with an American accent might have been laughable, but that wasn't enough to put me off this film. Loads of elements that I liked in this action-horror including a rewarding plot twist. Actually preferred this to Drive Angry. Fuck the haters!

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Rubber (2010)
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The film is perfectly content to present itself as a left-field comedy and appear smart with it's evaluation on film-fiction and various cliches but I felt those elements ran out of steam pretty quickly and at times got annoying. Even though he was nothing but wasted potential, I got a blast out of seeing Wings Hauser in this - damn he looks old now. Once I accepted the fact that it's a film about a killer tyre, it was pretty forgettable and kinda dull quite early on.

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Post by Comedy Quaddafi »

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Prey (2010) - I missed the latest pig-flicks that came out in recent years so I decided to check this French one out. I couldn't connect with it at all, the characters seemed silly to me and the eco-message was handled in a sort of sloppy and careless way. I was pretty bored most of the time and the pig-attacks are a little underwhelming for a film that has little else going for it.
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The Resident (2011)
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By the numbers and formulaic nineties thriller given a 21st century coating, not the kind of film I want from Hammer. It's fairly suspenseful despite all the cliches you would associate with this type of production that deals with the perils of leading a man on and relegating them to the friend-zone. It's decent but hardly unique and at times it almost felt like a dark chick flick rather something catering to my tastes. Jeffrey Dean Morgan did a good job of making this film watchable as the creepy stalker landlord which was a darn sight more entertaining than having to see Hilary Swank doing the whole liberated woman steez again. It was good to see Christopher Lee in a supporting part, but I expected something more for his return to Hammer or more importantly, a better film for that matter. There are a whole bunch of films in a similar vein to The Resident that were far better than this average film. Since it's return, Hammer is 2 out 4 in my book.

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Tommy Bunz wrote:Image
Revanche (Gotz Spielmann, 2008) - Don't have a whole lot to say about this except that this was really excellent. Deserves all the praise its gotten and then some. Low-key humanistic shit. Regret leaving it sit unwatched on my shelf for almost a year.
Took yesterday off and watched this. Brilliant. Great recommendation.

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Slaughter High (1986) (aka April Fool's Day, Jolly Killer)
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At last, I can see what the hell is going in the shitty lighting scenes. The best golden age slasher movie from the silver age slasher era. RIP Marty!

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Post by Comedy Quaddafi »

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The House of Yellow Carpet (1983) - More or less a gialli stageplay which takes place inside an appartment where we follow a couple who are trying to sell a yellow carpet, that invites a dangerous stranger in to their lives. So far there's only a VHS-version so it's a bit under the radar but definitely worth it for fans of the genre. Good score from Cipriani and a cool hammy performance from the villain. 80's gialli misses the mark often but this is solid and fairly experimentative in the way the twists are set up, stretching credibility but entertaining you with suspense.
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Public Enemy (2002) - Not as good as other Korean thrillers of recent years, despite many people claiming it is. The slapstick humor is a bit too much for me personally and it's a bit too long considering the somewhat thin premise. It is however a fairly effective story of two men battling out on each their side of the law. One is the dirty cop who is looking to redeem himself, and the other is a murder wearing a raincoat. It's allrite but skip it if you haven't seen Bedeviled, A Bittersweet Life, Chaser, I Saw The Devil, etc.
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Resurrection (2011) - I hope Denmark can take a hint from Norway and put out more horror. We're far too interested in chin-gazing tame dramas that the foreign markets deservedly ignore, but the language of zombies is a universal one and everpopular - not everyone can be Von Trier and that's a good thing. At least we have AWE who are willing to put stuff like this out on DVD, without them young directors like Haugegaard would barely have a way to reach the public.
Made on a budget of about $10.000 this is very impressive on many fronts. First of all you have to applaud how liberal the church-community is here, I really can't see priests in other countries condoning the use of a church as location for an extremely gory, pessimistic and blood-soaked splatterfest (the priest in the movie is a real priest as well). Yet the entire movie, more or less, takes place in a church where zombies start eating the people attending a funeral. It all kicks off with a bang after the sermon and little time is wasted on explanations and zombie-mythology. The three siblings in the movie barricade themselves and wait for the time to strike back. This leads me to the main flaw with the movie, the acting is a bit shit and notiecably so whne you speak the language they speak. The dialog is decent so I mostly blame the actors. Anyway I'm surprised at how far they went in how elaborate the kills and gore is. And equally surprised at just how grim and unkind the movie is. There are themes of christianity tied to the story but no direct meaning offered to the viewer making it a bit ambigous, it's clear that the zombies aren't characters as such, they are more or less props used in the telling the story of a family in decay, however thin it may be.
Clocking in at 50 minutes a comparison to the equally short German zombie-movie Rammbock is unavoidable. Rammbock is the better movie but people looking for zombie-action will be much more pleased with this, the effects might be cheap but they work incredibly well and never look as cheap as they are.
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things that make you go :killacam:. thought this was going to solely focus on the case of that old lady who spilled mcdonalds coffee on herself back in the 90's, but that was actually the least interesting case they discussed in this HBO doc. i did let out a too loud oofum when they showed the mcdonalds ladys burn photos though. fucking horrifying. intriguing/depressing doc. well worth watching

currently watching cyberbully on abc family. lilly has never needed miles more, and where is she now. stop it with the nirvana covers and come get these bullys off lolas back while she still has a back that needs bullys removed from
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Exorcismus (2011) - Making an exorcist-movie must be a bit tough for an ambitious film-maker, you can't escape that you are indirectly going up against an undisputed masterpiece of horror and movies in general, The Exorcist. There's been a few in recent years and now this REC-producers produced movie taking place in Britain is next up. It starts off as a teeny drama and somewhat stays in that line for that duration, I don't mind this because a girl hurling goo at the screen is something we've seen and it won't impress us one bit so the focus is creating a haunting and grim atmosphere, which it does. The one thing that makes this an above-average attempt is young Irish actress Sophie Vavasseur. She really nails the role as a posessed girl, the best scenes are whenever shes alone with someone and you suspect it's the demon talking rather than her, with subtle face-movements she lets the audience know things are about to turn bad, it's really convincing and she does it effortlessly, it appears. I haven't seen any of the recent exorcist movies but I'm guessing this might be the better of them because instead of focusing on the actual exorcism-sessions (which has been done to death) we get to see how it all affects the family, this does make the ending and certain sequences appear restrained and perhaps tame, but I respect what they were going for. A respectable 6/10 kind of movie.

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MR73 (2008) - Auteuil and Marchal is a winning combo, we know this from the other movie they collaborated on, 36. This a much darker and less audience-friendly police thriller soaked in melancholy and ugliness. Marchal, the director, is an ex-cop and you just feel it adds an air of realism to the affair in how everything is depicted around the police-station and the investigations - to further add to that, this is based on a true story which helps to make it seem all the more real. Auteuil plays a world-weary cop with little to live for other than a last shot at redemption, so he helps to attempt to crack a murder-case eventhough he is relegated to desk-duties after hijacking a bus during a binge. The way the movie is shot reminds me of the underrated cop-flick Narc and the movie shares that nasty feeling that movie imposed on the viewer. In my opinion no one did thrillers in the 00's like the French and this further supports my conviction.
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Post by Y@k Bollocks »

MR73 sounds dope. Going to check that out. Did you watch that French cop show, 'Engrenages'? I've just finished it and it sounds similar to this.

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