What are you watching?

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

One Night At Mccools was a bit less sharp than I remembered but still a damn good time in front of the telly. Then again I can enjoy just about any neo noir.

Been babysitting a 4 year old a lot recently so have been watching a lot of kids movies. Burton's Alice In Wonderlnd? Terrible. Really just the worst. I just- nup, cant even.... The Spiderwick Chronicles? Not too bad. Has the Bates Motel kid playing twins. Gets very silly by the end. Hocus Pocus? I remembered this sucked when I was young. It still sucks now.

The revelation though was the recent Peter Rabbit movie. How good is this? Genuinely hilarious in a way that will get kids and adults laughing. Pixar wish they could do this. Surprisingly for a British film it has almost no British people in it, the cast largely made up of Aussies and Americans. Don't know how they got away with that. If you tried to pull that shit in Australia the local actors unions would be doing hunger strikes on parliaments lawn. I do like Rose Byrne with a toffee British accent though. If she'd pulled that out earlier in her career she could have had a better career plying her trade as a thin, attractive Kate Winslett. Very appealing lead. So much so in fact that they had to dye Domnhall Gleesons orange locks black because there's no way you'd believe a girl with that much going for her would date a Ginger. I assume that was the motivation anyway. Really though, if you have access to a kid, or can kidnap one for the day, do yourself a favour and sit them down in front of this. Movie magic.

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

Just looking it up. Turns out Peter Rabbit was a US/Australian coproduction which explains the cast. Impressive job making Sydney look like England. Hard thing to do. England's so much greener.

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

Lovelace - This was OK, but it was a typical bio-pic and it was too reminiscent of the far-superior STAR 80 (I think the filmmakers realized this, so they put Eric Roberts in a cameo).

Hideous! - This is just perfect campy film making, courtesy of Full Moon. Six actors hamming it up in that familiar castle with some silly creatures showing up at the end. I really, really enjoyed this one, although some would find it obnoxious.

Kill, Granny, Kill! - Not bad indie horror that is more serious than the title would indicate and it has some surprisingly good acting and writing.

VFW - The latest from Joe Begos has a stellar dream cast of B-movie vets playing a group of, er, vets who hang out at a bar owned by Stephen Lang. The first 15 minutes were absolutely glorious: Lang, Bill Sadler, The Hammer, Martin Kove, George Wendt and David Patrick Kelly just sitting at the bar, laughing, busting balls and telling stories. I wish the whole movie was just them hanging out; once the siege/horror story begins, it becomes significantly less interesting.

Saint Bernard - Third time watching Gabe Bartalos' near-brilliant piece of outsider art; this is a real gem for fans of Damon Packard, Harmony Korine and other uncompromising auteurs. It's hypnotic and endlessly inventive.

The King of the Kickboxers - Pretty rad early '90s action trash that has an absolutely, hilariously bad lead performance from Loren Avedon. He's worth the price alone.

Mikey - I had seen this several times in the '90s, but what really struck me this time is just how young the actor playing Mikey is; according to the special features he was between the ages of 8-10 and he looks it. Watching this little kid killing and manipulating people is disturbing beyond belief and pretty fucking tasteless, too. In other words, it's another gem in a long line of great killer-kid thrillers.

Random Acts of Violence - There's just something off about Jay Baruchel's new movie (based on a comic). It's about a guy copying the murders from a popular comic book. It has a couple of good scenes, but it never comes alive like it should.

3:15 - This is a solid teen gang/exploitation movie. It has lots of good stuff in it. At one point, the main character gets trapped in his girlfriends bedroom when her parents come home unexpectedly - and when he comes downstairs (instead of going out the window), his girl's father is none other than Wings Hauser! I can't think of having to face a scarier-angry-dad-whose-daughter-you've-just-been-banging than Wings. It's a classic scene.

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

The revelation though was the recent Peter Rabbit movie. How good is this? Genuinely hilarious in a way that will get kids and adults laughing. Pixar wish they could do this. Surprisingly for a British film it has almost no British people in it, the cast largely made up of Aussies and Americans. Don't know how they got away with that. If you tried to pull that shit in Australia the local actors unions would be doing hunger strikes on parliaments lawn. I do like Rose Byrne with a toffee British accent though. If she'd pulled that out earlier in her career she could have had a better career plying her trade as a thin, attractive Kate Winslett. Very appealing lead. So much so in fact that they had to dye Domnhall Gleesons orange locks black because there's no way you'd believe a girl with that much going for her would date a Ginger. I assume that was the motivation anyway. Really though, if you have access to a kid, or can kidnap one for the day, do yourself a favour and sit them down in front of this. Movie magic.

I saw this at the cinema with my children and loved it, despite my healthy aversion to James Corden. Lovely script and some excellent performances all round.

Was looking forward to the sequel until the lockdown hit and its release date got pushed back.

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

Angie Tribeca - Season 4
Significantly less good than the previous seasons but there's still a gem or two in here (I loved the Fargo parody). Two main cast members dip out (one completely and Deon Cole almost completely) and are replaced with Bobby Cannavale who does good as Tribeca's son and some black lady I've never heard of before or since. Very uneven season. They should've kept i like the 3 other seasons instead of switching to some type of Mission Impossible kind of thing. Still, recommended viewing for the three mostly excellent first seasons.

[funkvader Member Find all posts View Profile Close funkvader]

"Alphabet City"
This won't be for everybody. The script is thin. But ooooooooo it's just right for me. Neon and synth pop.

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

In Search Of Darkness. This is good covid viewing because it goes for 4 hours or more and requires absolutely nothing of the viewer watching. Pretty exhaustive doc covering the US 80s horror boom. The doc goes year by year ticking off dozens of 80s classics one by one with a field of experts having their two cents on each. Then they have sidebars to shine the spotlight on make up effects, scream queens etc. I had only a couple issues. The field of experts could have been wider and more qualified/interesting. They've got some good names in there, Dante, Carpenter, Joe Bob, Elvira etc but there's some place holders in here. Alex Winter because he starred in Lost Boys? Glorified extra. There's a mailbag girl and some other oddities whose credentials I didn't catch. The other is that non-US horror is barely mentioned. Obviously there would be too much to cover but why not one sidebar to provide some context with what's going on in, say, Italy and Japan? Still killed many good hours for me and I give it the thumbs up. Its streaming on Shudder.

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

Thanks for the tip, Dom. I'm gonna check it out. Love horror docs.

Paul
Pretty decent fun. I'm not the biggest Simon Pegg/Nick Frost fan but checked
it out because of Kristen Wiig. I laughed several times and I've spent worse 100
or so minutes in my life than this. Doubt I'll rewatch it though.

Horrible Bosses 2
I remember nothing about the first film and I can't be bothered to go rewatch it.
This was alright I guess. Way too long though. Also Jennifer Aniston looks plastic
and weird in this movie. I love Charlie Day for It's always sunny... but damn is he
one note.

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

A few thoughts on this weekend's viewing...

Exorcist III (1990)

My first time watching this, and I enjoyed it a lot more than I expected to. Blatty's approach to making a horror film seems to consist of throwing in way too much of everything - which is great. Every single thing in this movie is creepy and foreboding and scary, and every time there's a chance to throw in a jump scare or a disembodied demon growl, you're damn well gonna get one.

I was really happy that the story moves away from another go-round of the "possessed little girl" routine, as the "occult crime story" angle strikes me as a lot more interesting, and The Gemini Killer has the most ridiculous collection of show-boating serial killer trademarks I've ever seen pre-'Silence of the Lambs' (he only kills people whose names begins with 'K', uses a special drug to paralyse his victims, cuts off a certain finger, draws astrological symbols on their back and replaces pieces of their bodies with religious paraphernalia - man is not short of ideas). Watching George C. Scott do his usual simmering pressure cooker thing, occasionally boiling over and losing his shit, is also a joy as always (great late era performance from him here actually).

I'm not sure it succeeds in saying anything terribly profound about anything, but it's a cracking horror movie which actually pretty much perfects a lot of then-unusual stuff re: atmospherics, sound design, muted colours etc which has become standard issue for the genre over the past few decades.

Lethal Panther (1990)

Wonderful, ultra-trashy fun from Godfrey Ho, proving once again that he really had the chops to deliver a solid movie when he was allowed to actually shoot a whole one front-to-back without any IFD cut-up shenanigans. Well, by "solid", I mean it's a shamelessly opportunistic cash-in on both the 'Robotrix'/'Naked Killer' erotic action movie trend and the John Woo 'heroic bloodshed' stuff,* knocked out quickly in the Philippenes with an incoherent, bizzaro world plot and hilariously inept English dubbing... but it moves like a rocket, has some quality action scenes, shovels in as much (fairly strong) sex and violence as could possibly be wished for in between slo-mo shots of perfectly made up killer ladies firing multiple machine guns, and is basically a thing of beauty and a joy forever. Do not watch sober.

* Actually I just checked IMDB and confirmed that this came out before either 'Robotrix' or 'Naked Killer', so, uh... nice one Godfrey!

The Good, the Bad and The Ugly (1966)

Despite its iconic status, re-watching this for the first time in a good while confirmed my suspicion that it is by far the least satisfactory of Leone's first four westerns. I won't say "worst", as of course it's still a great watch, packed with more moments of inspiration and excitement than most filmmakers stumble on in an entire lifetime, but it suffers badly from the fact that all three characters are basically just greedy, amoral bastards, meaning that their showdown, magnificent though it is, lacks the kind of emotional clout which elevates 'For a Few Dollars More' and 'Once Upon a Time..' to masterpiece status.

Added to that, the games of one upmanship between Clint and Wallach which take up so much of the screen time are basically pretty childish and boring, leading to some heavy drag in the middle hour (during which Van Cleef disappears for aaaages), and things are further muddled by Leone's attempts to imitate David Lean. I mean, ok, the epic, "war is hell" stuff here is all perfectly good, but it's basically just rehashing stuff that's been done better, and with more sincerity, by other filmmakers, whilst distracting Leone from the smaller scale scenes of individual confrontation in which he really shines.

In fact, I think the best scenes here are actually the first two - the anonymous bounty hunters entering the building to get Wallach, and Van Cleef killing the homesteader. Along with the final half hour, they're the main bits worth hanging onto, justifying the movie's 'classic' status, but there's a lot of fairly meandering, hard-to-love stuff to trudge through in-between, which isn't such a good look when it's book-ended in the director's filmography by two of the best genre films ever made.

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

The Night Before
Hilarious crazy-night-on-the-town 80's movie starring Keanu Reeves
at peak "whoa!" and a disturbingly pretty, adorably feisty Lori Loughlin.
The ending is a little far fetched regarding how forgiving she is towards
Keanu's character but whatever. Let's just go with it. A real gem of a movie!

Calcutta
Lesser but still pretty solid Alan Ladd/William Bendix pairing from the 40's.
Well shot with swell dames and a suave, cool Ladd. Decent movie.

Evils Of The Night
Bizarre and all over the place. Entertainingly sleazy and stupid as all hell.
I loved the ditzy blonde. Pity she kept her top on. Oh, well.

[Andrew Monroe Pallid Hands Find all posts View Profile Close Andrew Monroe]

THE OUTPOST - Based on the non-fiction book by Jake Tapper, about a small group of soldiers based at Combat Outpost Keating, an army base in a valley surrounded by 3 mountains in Afghanistan (called the most deadly place in the entire country). The Taliban attacks in massive force, resulting in a gripping, gruesomely violent battle. This is a terrific, tense as hell war film. Scott Eastwood makes a big impression as one of the officers, he's definitely got a bit of his dad's charisma, and resembles him a bit as well. I really enjoyed this, well worth checking out.

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

Stephen Weeks' GHOST STORY (1974).

[Darcy Parker Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Darcy Parker]

I watched The Infiltrator, starring Bryan Cranston this week. Excellent film, and a crazy real-life story of an undercover investigation that went bigger than anyone expected in the beginning.

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

Caught Boiled Angels on Amazon Prime this past week. Well done. Even had a bit of info I didn't know. Followed the Diana case from when it started until early 2000s.

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

Mayhem

A virus infects an office block full of lawyers that gives everyone very bad impulse control for 8 hours. That means Yuen and 'Australias own' Samara Weaving have 8 hours to kill all the people who've wronged them without facing legal consequences. Being out of their minds makes them exempt from prosecution.

Its a bit of fun. Nicely bloody. And, unusually, our heroes in the story are the ones pertrating the mindless violence and mayhem. Neat twist. Weaving has a knack for turning up in fun horror stuff.