What are you watching?

[Dom D Spoon! Find all posts View Profile Close Dom D]

I like RISKY BUSINESS. Have you seen COCKTAIL?

Cocktail was one of those movies growing up that wa as always on where ever I was. I dont think I've ever put it on myself, it just kind of follows me around.

It's a classic. Tangerine Dream's incredible score really helps

Indeed. I forget the name of the genre but we've been listening to a lot of modern artists who are going for that 80s synth movie soundtrack sound. Paradise Walks, Neon Nox, NINA. It's damned fine sound for late night drinking sessions.

[Takuma Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Takuma]

The Case of the Scorpion's Tail (Italy, 1971) [BD] - 3/5
A pretty good giallo captures the Greece locale nicely, but the story/characterization feels superficial. Charismatic Anita Strindberg was better cast in Martino's later, superior film Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key.

Chato's Land (USA, 1972) [DVD] - 3/5
A group of white men try to hunt down Apache Charles Bronson who killed a racist pig in a pub, only to find the roles reversed in the wilderness. A pleasingly tough chase / revenge film, but there's almost zero character depth to Bronson's character. The miscellaneous bunch chasing him (including Jack Palance, whose character is not completely void of humanity) is actually more interesting. I viewed the uncut Japanese DVD; the PG rated US version is slightly censored in two scenes for violence and nudity.

Fair Game (Australia, 1986) [VoD] - 2.5/5
A pretty tame Aussie exploitationer is more of a bullying film than a human hunt film, with three semi-comical jerks harassing a lady in the wilderness. The famous scene where lead Cassandra Delaney is tied topless on a truck's hood is cool, but that's it for the shocks (unless you count the God-awful score). Boring it isn't however, thanks to the action oriented approach and lead Delaney who is very watchable… and sounds shockingly much like a Japanese anime character!

Sudden Death (USA, 1995) [DVD] - 3.5/5
Competently made “second class” Die Hard clone. Good action, tight pacing (even at 1h 50m), relatively decent production values and a good use of the location (hockey stadium during Stanley Cup finals) make this one of Van Damme's best. Good performances too, both the Belgian and bad guy Powers Boothe.

[Paul L Scholar of Sleaze Find all posts View Profile Close Paul L]

Sucker Punch. What the hell was that? The most interesting thing about this film is it got made at all. I don't know how this film could be pitched and I doubt the script made for a great read. Why was 98 million shelled out for it? Zac Snyder just seems to be given a blank cheque and a lot more creative freedom than he has any right to expect. It's odd that he seems to have been hailed within the Hollywood community as some sort of big budget, maverick auteur. It's feels like an unfounded reputation. After coming out of the gate strong with Dawn Of The Dead and 300 the man has not made a movie that's done well with critics and plenty of them have underperformed at the box office to boot. I get the impression the lower budget of those early films was one of their saving graces. Money gives him the opportunity to do whatever he wants and that's not a good thing. He needs to be kept on the straight and narrow.

I though Batman versus Superman was the lowest he could sink as that was already at Mariana Trench depths but I think he's topped himself here. But hey, both female leads Australian. Don't see that every day. And it's a leg mans dream.

I really struggle to see the appeal of Snyder's films. Loud and obnoxious, is how I'd describe them.

ZOMBIELAND: DOUBLE TAP is what I'm watching currently. Flipping terrible. I enjoyed the first film, but this is so flat it's almost non-existent. At the risk of sounding incredibly sexist (which is not my intention at all), Emma Stone looks incredibly haggard. A few reasonable laughs from Harrelson and... that's it.

[funkvader Member Find all posts View Profile Close funkvader]

About to fire up "World's Greatest Sinner." Saw it once, years ago. Tim Carey is a legend. I even like him in things like "Beach Blanket Bingo."

[Paul L Scholar of Sleaze Find all posts View Profile Close Paul L]

About to fire up "World's Greatest Sinner." Saw it once, years ago. Tim Carey is a legend. I even like him in things like "Beach Blanket Bingo."

I'm on board with this. A damned fine film... :)

[Matt H. Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Matt H.]

SHAKEDOWN - Watched this for probably the 5th time and it was the most memorable viewing yet; I'm worried now that I may ruin it if I watch it again. It's simply one of the best action/cop thrillers of the '80s and James Glickenhaus' masterpiece. It's nearly a perfect movie, except for the ending with Sam Elliot clinging to the airplane - it's just too much and it's really fucking dumb. Otherwise, this is a bad boy. I clicked on the commentary for a second and was pleasantly surprised to learn that it's moderated by Edwin Samuelson. It reminded me how much I miss The Cinefiles (whatever happened to those guys?).

[Scott Intellectual Carrot Find all posts View Profile Close Scott]

SHAKEDOWN - Watched this for probably the 5th time and it was the most memorable viewing yet; I'm worried now that I may ruin it if I watch it again. It's simply one of the best action/cop thrillers of the '80s and James Glickenhaus' masterpiece. It's nearly a perfect movie, except for the ending with Sam Elliot clinging to the airplane - it's just too much and it's really fucking dumb. Otherwise, this is a bad boy. I clicked on the commentary for a second and was pleasantly surprised to learn that it's moderated by Edwin Samuelson. It reminded me how much I miss The Cinefiles (whatever happened to those guys?).

I love this movie. Makes a good Sam Elliot double feature with FATAL BEAUTY. He's pretty much the same character in both. You can never watch either of them enough.

[Matt H. Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Matt H.]

I love this movie. Makes a good Sam Elliot double feature with FATAL BEAUTY. He's pretty much the same character in both. You can never watch either of them enough.

There's a scene in SHAKEDOWN where they walk past a marquee on the Deuce announcing FATAL BEAUTY. It's very possible that it was actually playing at the time of filming (in addition to being a nice in-joke). Speaking of which, there's some tasty-looking marquees throughout - I especially liked the one announcing a double feature of THE HIDDEN and ELM ST. 3.

[Paul L Scholar of Sleaze Find all posts View Profile Close Paul L]

SHAKEDOWN - Watched this for probably the 5th time and it was the most memorable viewing yet; I'm worried now that I may ruin it if I watch it again. It's simply one of the best action/cop thrillers of the '80s and James Glickenhaus' masterpiece. It's nearly a perfect movie, except for the ending with Sam Elliot clinging to the airplane - it's just too much and it's really fucking dumb. Otherwise, this is a bad boy. I clicked on the commentary for a second and was pleasantly surprised to learn that it's moderated by Edwin Samuelson. It reminded me how much I miss The Cinefiles (whatever happened to those guys?).

This was released as BLUE JEAN COP over here. I loved it back in the day and used to watch the VHS over and over. I vividly remember that little bit of character building near the start with Weller's lawyer listening to 'Purple Haze' whilst preparing his breakfast.

Sadly, I never bought the DVD and probably haven't seen it in close to 25 years.

The trailer seemed ubiquitous in the late 80s.

[Newt Cox Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Newt Cox]

SHAKEDOWN - Watched this for probably the 5th time and it was the most memorable viewing yet; I'm worried now that I may ruin it if I watch it again. It's simply one of the best action/cop thrillers of the '80s and James Glickenhaus' masterpiece. It's nearly a perfect movie, except for the ending with Sam Elliot clinging to the airplane - it's just too much and it's really fucking dumb. Otherwise, this is a bad boy. I clicked on the commentary for a second and was pleasantly surprised to learn that it's moderated by Edwin Samuelson. It reminded me how much I miss The Cinefiles (whatever happened to those guys?).

I need to watch that. Grabbed a vhs of it a few years ago cheap.

[Alex K. Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Alex K.]

Fuck, now I have to watch Shakedown.

[Alex K. Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Alex K.]

Re-watched Wishmaster. I forgot how fun it could be and it has some really fun gore.

[Alex K. Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Alex K.]

I finished Shakedown. Fine action film aside from the courtroom drama shit that was ultimately pointless and should have been heavily abbreviated.

[Scott Intellectual Carrot Find all posts View Profile Close Scott]

I finished Shakedown. Fine action film aside from the courtroom drama shit that was ultimately pointless and should have been heavily abbreviated.

Now you get to watch FATAL BEAUTY!

[BW Haggar Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close BW Haggar]

By complete coincidence, the past few days ended up being "1990 weekend" at my house, revisiting a few films from that year I've not seen for a while...

Hardware

Pretty much a compendium of everything some 2000AD-reading, Forbidden Planet-frequenting type guy would have considered 'cool' and 'edgy' circa 1990, but it still holds up really well. I'd forgotten how far is veers into becoming a disorientating psychedelic / montage freakout in the final act, which I suppose is the kind of thing we'd expect from a Richard Stanley film now that he's more of a known quantity, but it must have confused the hell out of everyone who turned out at the time to see a straightforward cyberpunk-y SF/horror movie.

Also -- I'm sure this has probably been discussed elsewhere, and I know that Stanley was one of the first people to publically speak about Harvey Weinstein's sexual impropriety after working with him on this film, but I nearly did a double-take upon realising that the overweight pervert/peeping tom character in this movie is named Weinberg... surely that can't be a coincidence?!

Predator 2

I've always felt this one is a bit underrated in comparison to its predecessor, and remain of that opinion. Sure, it's not as good as the first film, but the first film is pretty much perfect, and this is only a notch or two down from there. It's just such a relentless, wild-ass action movie, and never eases up on the throttle for more than a few seconds at a time... it would be a great, ridiculously OTT '80s cop movie even if the Predator didn't show up. The only negatives are that I can't quite buy Danny Glover as the 'Dirty Harry'/cop-on-the-edge character he's supposed to be playing (those baggy, pastel suits he wears are an odd wardrobe choice for a guy who seems to spend most of his working life blasting away at gangbangers with semi-automatic weapons), and the whole conclusion on the spaceship is kind of a let-down... but that aside it just plain ROCKS, in capitals.

Goodfellas

First time I've returned to this in many years, and probably the first time I've ever seen it in a decent presentation and given it the attention it deserves. (In the past I've always just caught it on TV, or seen it in the background at a friend's house or somesuch.)

My big takeaway this time around was marvelling at how closely Scorcese's style here mirrors that of '70s jitsuroku yakuza films. All the naturalistic, overlapping tough guy banter and endless scenes in sweaty dive bars, the elaborate handheld/dolly shots travelling through crowded, chaotic environments and the general sense of claustrophobia, the 'true story' / history aspect, the jittery, speed-freak pacing, even the way it compresses time by throwing us headfirst into the next section of the narrative and leaving us to fill in all the boring story-telling stuff for ourselves (oh, he's got kids now, oh, he's got a mistress set up in an apartment and he's dealing drugs on the side... etc). By the end, I could almost hear that 'Battles Without Honour & Humanity' musical sting playing each time a messy & unnecessary killing marked the transition to a new 'chapter'.

(The big difference though of course is the emphasis on family which comes with the Italian-American milieu; thinking about it, I suppose that the portrayal of yakuza as orphans and lone wolves was a romantic element which the jitsuroku films carried over from the ninkyo yakuza tradition, but either way -- it's certainly difficult to imagine one of Bunta Sugawara's characters inviting his pals home to meet his mother, or Tetsuya Watari attending a kid's birthday party or whatever.)

What's most interesting about this similarity though is that, whilst I know Scorcese fronts as a bit of a world cinema buff, I'm pretty sure he couldn't possibly have claimed an intimate knowledge of '70s yakuza films as far back as the '80s (were ANY of them widely screened in the West prior to the DVD era?), making this seem like a fascinating example of filmmakers from different cultures independently developing very similar styles to tell very similar stories on opposite sides of the globe, perhaps?