What are you watching?

[Dom D]

The Bloodstained Lawn:


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The fuck was that?!

A wealthy couple is draining the blood of hippies in their basement and selling it to the highest bidders overseas. Simple enough really but the execution! It's frequently so boring youll want to top yourself but just as you're preparing the noose it perks up for some groovy 70s naked dancing and fun- Frightened Woman an influence? Maybe I can't be bothered to check release dates. If so the influence never lasts as it quickly switches back to being unbearably boring. It's all over the shop. Occasionally it feels like moneys been spent on it and then goes to looking completely threadbare. It's just very strange all round.

[Jason C]

Commando's gotta be the ne plus ultra of a certain type of trash.

As much of an Arnold fan as I was in the 80's, Commando was not a favorite of mine back then. I assume its because I was watching a tape of the TV broadcast, and unlike Predator, it lost much of the appeal with the toned down violence. That has certainly changed in recent years as its made it way into a yearly rotation for me. It's bonkers and I love it.

[Matt H.]

Commando's gotta be the ne plus ultra of a certain type of trash.

This is true.

[Dom D]

yeah, isn't it the whole point of true lies that arnold is miscast?

That's probably fair as it stands. I was just figuring there's a non-gimmick movie in there. It worked out for me though. Because I watched True Lies Disney decided I would probably want to watch Commando. Disney were right! It had been too long. Commando's gotta be the ne plus ultra of a certain type of trash.

[killer must kill again]

I definitely cannot argue what your saying about Arnold, but I think the novelty of seeing Arnold play James Bond makes up for the fact that its absurd. There is comedy in seeing Arnold playing that role and delivering those lines. Fans of Arnold will enjoy his larger than life persona doing things that only make sense in the Arnie-verse. In a vacuum and with no context TRUE LIES doesn't work, but as an Arnold Schwarzenegger flick, its a fun ride. Every Arnold film is a fantasy film so why not let him play a secret agent, Chicago mobster or a deep cover FBI agent.

yeah, isn't it the whole point of true lies that arnold is miscast? it's fucking hilarious! I rewatched it 1 year ago, it drags a little in the middle section but the jet fighter ending is still stupidly entertaining as hell!
also prime tia carrere and a milfy jamie lee curtis doing striptease... what's not to like?

[BW Haggar]

Seconded, SLASH/BACK was a hit here. Anyone who enjoyed ATTACK THE BLOCK, or BLOOD QUANTUM, Jeff Barnaby's zombie movie should check it out. RIP, Mr Barnaby.

I'm glad to hear you enjoyed it too Barry.

It's such a nice, low key, cynicism-free kinda 'cool little movie', I feel the need to champion it.

Oddly, 'Attack The Block' didn't occur to me as a comparison for some reason, but, yeah... clearly they have a lot in common.

[Jason C]

True Lies: I haven't seen this since the 90s. On a rewatch it's got the wrong screenwriter and the wrong leading man. Cameron nails the action stuff, as you'd expect, and the comedy in the action is fine. Terribly dialogue though. Cameron has a very blunt, obvious approach to dialogue. You can always guess the next line a Cameron protagonist is going to say. It doesn't sit well with comedy.

Mostly though, how do you cast Arnold Schwarzenneger in this role? a) the man has zero comic instincts. b) he's supposedly to be a mild mannered computer rep but he's built like Mr Universe. When he interrogates his wife and asks her to tell him about her husband how is part of her response not: 'he's surprisingly jacked'? It makes no sense. I'm forgetting who the leading man options were back then but if this was a modern movie cast, say, Colin Farrell in that role and you've got yourself a movie.

I definitely cannot argue what your saying about Arnold, but I think the novelty of seeing Arnold play James Bond makes up for the fact that its absurd. There is comedy in seeing Arnold playing that role and delivering those lines. Fans of Arnold will enjoy his larger than life persona doing things that only make sense in the Arnie-verse. In a vacuum and with no context TRUE LIES doesn't work, but as an Arnold Schwarzenegger flick, its a fun ride. Every Arnold film is a fantasy film so why not let him play a secret agent, Chicago mobster or a deep cover FBI agent.

To me, it makes more sense to think of True Lies as starting out with "I want to work with Arnold again, what type of role should we give him next". I can't imagine it stated with "we have a secret agent film called True Lies, who would be best for the role".

All that said, I feel like True Lies is aging worse than most of Arnold's films. And for the me the reason is the running time. The middle third drags a bit so I'm ready for the film to end by the time the bridge blows up.

[Barry M]

Slash / Back
(Nyla Innuksuk, 2022)

Now this one on the other hand, I really liked!

Basically, what we've got here is 'Over the Edge' meets 'The Thing', set in an Inuit village just south of the Artic Circle, where a gang of bored teenage girls are forced to defend their community from body-hopping alien monsters whilst their parents are off getting drunk at a square dance.

It's all very nearly ruined by terrible CGI animals and some scarcely-much-better, "guy in a mask" level practical effects... but the horror aspect is soft-pedalled throughout, so it doesn't matter too much. It's all just an excuse to get the girls into tense and scary situations, allowing them to bond and develop, and to use their combined 'ancient hunting culture + modern digital teen' style moxie to fight back against the invaders, which is where the film really excels.

The setting is an unusual and compelling one for an action/adventure story, giving us a lot of casual insight into life as experienced by tribal peoples in Canada's far north, and the central characters are just AWESOME -- they speak and behave like real teenagers, but are also hugely likeable and super-cool, which is a difficult balance to pull off (again, I'm reminded of 'Over The Edge' in this regard).

I guess this is more-or-less teen-friendly viewing, but it's in no way condescending or juvenile, and it's easy to imagine that viewers in the girls' own age group would get a kick out of seeing them kick ass with hunting rifles and giant choppers, so a solid recommendation for "family movie night" for anyone out there with kids.

Seconded, SLASH/BACK was a hit here. Anyone who enjoyed ATTACK THE BLOCK, or BLOOD QUANTUM, Jeff Barnaby's zombie movie should check it out. RIP, Mr Barnaby.

[Barry M]

Je brûle de partout (Jess Franco, 1979). Jess Franco: 1979. Yep, you open a can of Ding an sich, and sure enough, it is what it said on the label. Honestly, it kind of put me off watching DARK MISSION. God knows what numbing horrors lie behind the (Jess Franco, 1988) wrapper. A+

Il était une fois Marilyn Jess (Michel Caputo, 1987). Not since THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT'S WOMAN, etc. Charming, and the special features are aces. The conversation with Pascal Galbrun is fun, and the casting session tape is a wonder. A+

L'inconnu du lac (Alain Guiraudie, 2013). Gay as fuck, genius neo-noir. A+

Four Flies on Grey Velvet (Dario Argento, 1971). I did not turn the lights down as low as Dario wanted. Borogov'd. A+

Death Bed: The Bed That Eats (George Barry, 1977). RIP, George. A+++

[Dom D]

True Lies: I haven't seen this since the 90s. On a rewatch it's got the wrong screenwriter and the wrong leading man. Cameron nails the action stuff, as you'd expect, and the comedy in the action is fine. Terribly dialogue though. Cameron has a very blunt, obvious approach to dialogue. You can always guess the next line a Cameron protagonist is going to say. It doesn't sit well with comedy.

Mostly though, how do you cast Arnold Schwarzenneger in this role? a) the man has zero comic instincts. b) he's supposedly to be a mild mannered computer rep but he's built like Mr Universe. When he interrogates his wife and asks her to tell him about her husband how is part of her response not: 'he's surprisingly jacked'? It makes no sense. I'm forgetting who the leading man options were back then but if this was a modern movie cast, say, Colin Farrell in that role and you've got yourself a movie.

[Andrew Monroe]

Watching ON THE BEACH on TCM right now. Seen it before but I never get over how devastating and depressing this is. Great film but a real test of endurance.

[BW Haggar]

So, for no particular reason, this weekend was "new movies weekend" in my house! A rare occurance, to say the least.

New Order
(Michel Franco, 2021)

Well, you'd have to go a long way to find a commerically released fictional fim more thoroughly depressing than this one.

Kicks off like Mexico's subtlety-free answer to 'Parasite', as a swanky wedding party full of head-in-the-sand rich people is crashed by the feral, green paint-splattered rioters that the media has been warning everybody about for days, prompting their own security staff to also turn against them, with predictably harrowing results.

Meanwhile, the apparently well-intentioned bride-to-be is out swerving roadblocks, trying to obtain urgent medical care for the wife of a former domestic servant, and finds herself captured by a cartel of rogue soldiers, who are taking advantage of the new martial law regime to orchestrate their own mass kidnapping operation, based out of a disused prison building.

Rape, torture and general dehumanisation ensues, until the bride's brother & fiancee - fresh from burying their dead after the wedding massacre - take the ransom demands to the family's high level military connections, who proceed to close down the embarrassing rogue element within their ranks the only way they know how: by killing absolutely everyone, including the prisoners, and framing the poor, long-suffering peasant family whom the bride was initially trying to help for her kidnap and murder. They are executed. The End.

Jesus. I perhaps should have put in a spoiler warning before the above paragraphs, but to be honest, it's clear within the first five minutes that nothing nice is going to happen to anyone here, so who cares. Basically comprising a blandly restaged mega-mix of assorted terrible situtions which have occured in various parts of the world in recent years, liberally spiced with older visual references to the Mexican and French revolutions, Franco's film offers no thematic nuance, no glimmer of hope, no trace of human warmth - just a relentless parade of middle class nightmare fuel and craven injustice. He has the decency to cram it all into less than 90 minutes (short-sharp-shock style), but that's still longer than I really wished to spend being battered with the "LIFE IS SHIT" stick.


Slash / Back
(Nyla Innuksuk, 2022)

Now this one on the other hand, I really liked!

Basically, what we've got here is 'Over the Edge' meets 'The Thing', set in an Inuit village just south of the Artic Circle, where a gang of bored teenage girls are forced to defend their community from body-hopping alien monsters whilst their parents are off getting drunk at a square dance.

It's all very nearly ruined by terrible CGI animals and some scarcely-much-better, "guy in a mask" level practical effects... but the horror aspect is soft-pedalled throughout, so it doesn't matter too much. It's all just an excuse to get the girls into tense and scary situations, allowing them to bond and develop, and to use their combined 'ancient hunting culture + modern digital teen' style moxie to fight back against the invaders, which is where the film really excels.

The setting is an unusual and compelling one for an action/adventure story, giving us a lot of casual insight into life as experienced by tribal peoples in Canada's far north, and the central characters are just AWESOME -- they speak and behave like real teenagers, but are also hugely likeable and super-cool, which is a difficult balance to pull off (again, I'm reminded of 'Over The Edge' in this regard).

I guess this is more-or-less teen-friendly viewing, but it's in no way condescending or juvenile, and it's easy to imagine that viewers in the girls' own age group would get a kick out of seeing them kick ass with hunting rifles and giant choppers, so a solid recommendation for "family movie night" for anyone out there with kids.

Fun, heart-warming stuff, and a perfect palate-cleanser after sitting through the joyless slog of 'New Order'.


Enys Men
(Mark Jenkin, 2023)

The latest quote-unquote "elevated horror" / hauntological hang-out movie contender, currently receiving a big push from the BFI and big hype from the media here in the UK.

I didn't see Mark Jenkin's previous film 'Bait', but I got interested in checking this one out after reading that he still shoots using a 16mm bolex (Andy Milligan style!), and processes the film in his kitchen sink - a statement of DIY intent which appeals to me, given that he could have easily wrangled professional level production values for this gnomic tale of a woman residing alone on a fictional Cornish island observing a copse of rare flowers, had he wished to.

Indeed, the idea of filmmaking reinvented as a kind of rural handicraft features very strongly here, with the windswept nature footage and the obsessive, textured detail wrung out of the man-made elements within the frame (did I mention this is set in 1973 - I mean, of course it is) looking absolutely beautiful, all rendered uncanny and kinda weirdly subjective by the heavy layers of grain and natural/accidental light flashes and print damage.

Jenkins' own soundtrack - seemingly contructed from a bunch of found sounds and radio static filtered through some pedals - furthers this homemade vibe, and I enjoyed the way that he maps out the topography of his imaginary island using carefully framed bits of mainland; a process which put me in mind of certain '70s Jess Franco films, just as the ominous use of abandoned mine workings also allowed me to loosely fit the film into canon of earlier "Cornish horror", alongside 'Dr Blood's Coffin', 'Plague of the Zombies' and Mike Raven's 'Crucible of Terror'.

Not that there's a great deal of explicit horror stuff here, or indeed much in the way of a clearly delineated series of events at all, really. Though densely packed with images and movement (the inability of the bolex to extend shots beyond 30 seconds probably helps in that regard), the narrative information we are given is so oblique and chronologically disjointed that each viewer will probably emerge with their own interpretation of what the hell is actually going on here -- which is likely just as it should be.

Likewise, many viewers will probably be left cold by the whole experience, feeling it's a pretentious waste of time, and I certainly wouldn't blame them for that. Personally speaking, whilst it didn't have a huge emotional impact on me, I still really enjoyed it on a meditative/aesthetic level, simply because the stuff it's made out of (grainy 16mm footage of rocky headlands, deconstructed fragments of M.R. James-type ghost stories, eerie ruins and retro-'70s experimentalism) always really appeals to me. Your own mileage may vary.

[Andrew Monroe]

A Face in the Crowd (1958) Iconic. Great pacing & filmmaking with blunt force trauma grade messaging

LOVE this film. People who think Andy Griffith was just that tv show guy will be blown away by his performance in this. Still relevant to this day.

[Oily Maniac]

A Face in the Crowd (1958) Iconic. Great pacing & filmmaking with blunt force trauma grade messaging
Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971)
The El Deuce Tapes (2019) Don't check spoilers
Scream For Me Sarajevo (2017) Heavy doc about Bruce Dickinson performing in a warzone.
Piranha 2- not good but enough nudity, gore, Lance Hendrickson and James Cameron Underwater CINEMA to keep me watching

[Matt H.]

Relentless - I watched this again for the third or fourth time. It's such a solid flick and I love Leo Rossi's performance. Lustig was really on his way to the big time, but he just missed. It's unfortunate, because this one and HIT LIST are criminally underrated films and should've taken him to the next level. I'd also like to know what's going on with this series completely missing from HD. The four films in this series would make a great box set.