What are you watching?

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

Well it's a full on crap-o-rama at my place as I follow up EEAAO with Moonfall, one of the biggest box office bombs of all time. $150 million budget, $60 million at the box office. Ouch! Emmerich tests his belief that the proles will pay for anything as long as stuff blows up real good with one of the dumbest stories ever committed to film. Your $150 million doesn't buy the effects it used to either. They're pretty ropey. I momentarily felt bad about an independent film losing that much money and then I recalled the absolutely shameless Tesla product placement in this and all of a sudden I wasn't feeling sorry for them at all. Hopefully Musk paid out the nose for this.

Followed it up with Uncharted. This almost looks good next to the two previous movies. Low level Iniana Jones-esque shenanigans are generally paasable. A lot better than any of the Lara Croft movies that tried the same thing. I don't get Tom Holland as a star. He gives you nothing. Here he's blown away by, of all people, Mark Wahlberg who, in my eyes, has always been lucky just to have a job. As soon as the action starts Holland gets replaced with a CGI double who flips around in gravity defying ways so I guess you're not actually watching him that much.

It's tough being a movie watcher at the moment...

Why not watch something other than big budget Hollywood crap?

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

Why not watch something other than big budget Hollywood crap?

a) I do.
b) they're background noise while I do something else.
c) I like to stay on top of the culture.
d) these days a $60 million dollar Rick and Morty pastiche like Everything Everywhere is considered arthouse so I'm not sure there's a lot of options when you're browsing the new release section.

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

Lorna: I got to watching this quite by accident. I was wanting to watch some Franco and clicked on Lorna The Exorcist on my Plex and to my surprise a black and white American movie started playing instead. I didn't recognise the film though it was obvious from the first frame that it was a Meyer film. That's impressive isn't it? To be making low budget 4:3 black and white and still have a signature style that's so recognisable that an audience can recognise it instantly. Come to think of it, he my be the easiest director to pick of any. Once the credits started rolling all was explained, easy enough to misfile Lorna for Lorna The Exorcist.

Anyway, this wasn't familiar at all. Which is odd, cause I own it, you'd think I'd have seen it. It's been a while since ive viewed a Russ and it was a happy reminder of just how good he was. The only man to make the 4:3 ratio feel truly cinematic.

Jesus you wouldn't want to play this movie for a modern audience though. That rape scene that quickly develop into true love would go down like a brick.

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

Off Shudder

Strange Vice of Ms Wardh-Seen the better known giallos,mostly Argento and Fulci stuff. This was listed as leaving Shudder soon. Saw Edwige was in it and DAMN. What a movie. I need to watch more giallo.

Tombs of the Blind Dead-Saw Shudder had a nice cleaned up print of this,I'm still rocking the old BU DVD coffin set version. Wish I could have chosen between subs or Dubbed in English. Was trying to multitask and can't do that well while rreading subs. LOoks amazing,which helps offset the slow pacing.

Off TUBI

Decline of Western Civ 3-I had heard rumors about this film for a long ass time. Then thanks to someone here got sent a DVD-r of the leaked print. Bought the boxed set when that came out. And really can't detect any new or different footage between the leaked print,the boxed set or this version on Tubi. Focusing on the squatters/gutter punks in late 90s LAs Penalope once again captures a moment in time.

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

Off Shudder

Strange Vice of Ms Wardh-Seen the better known giallos,mostly Argento and Fulci stuff. This was listed as leaving Shudder soon. Saw Edwige was in it and DAMN. What a movie. I need to watch more giallo.

If you haven't seen 'em yet All The Colours Of The Dark and The Case Of The Bloody Iris are just as good for some Fenech giallo fun.

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

Why not watch something other than big budget Hollywood crap?

How can he be the artistic genius of the underground if he didn't watch all that mainstream stuff so he could bitch about it endlessly?

[Randy G Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Randy G]

Rewatched Bad Girls Go to Hell and Indecent Desires with the commentaries.

[Ian Jane Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close Ian Jane]

How can he be the artistic genius of the underground if he didn't watch all that mainstream stuff so he could bitch about it endlessly?

Don't be a jerk Darcy. Dom's done nothing wrong here and you're out of line. Don't do it again.

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

Caligula and Messalina - Seriously slimy erotica from the hilariously taste-challenged Bruno Mattei. I know it's Caligula, but I was a bit thrown off by how gross this is (I don't think it helped that I cracked open a bag of chips right before it's nastiest stretch). Speaking of stretch, have you ever seen a dilated horse vagina? You get to see several loving close-ups of one during the surprisingly sleazy horse sex scene; it comes right after the surprisingly funny donkey sex scene. The horse scene, though: I nearly puked. There's a shot of the stallion resting its horny head on the back of the mare that I'll never unsee: it's drooling on her back just like Krug in LHOTL after he's just raped Mari. Traumatizing! There's also two revolting sex scenes late in the game that had me questioning my sanity: one involving a nasty dwarf in a g-string and the other a straight sex scene featuring The Beast in Heat banging a hooker. Goddamn Bruno, you were one sick fuck!

[agent999 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close agent999]

Caligula and Messalina - Seriously slimy erotica from the hilariously taste-challenged Bruno Mattei. I know it's Caligula, but I was a bit thrown off by how gross this is (I don't think it helped that I cracked open a bag of chips right before it's nastiest stretch). Speaking of stretch, have you ever seen a dilated horse vagina? You get to see several loving close-ups of one during the surprisingly sleazy horse sex scene; it comes right after the surprisingly funny donkey sex scene. The horse scene, though: I nearly puked. There's a shot of the stallion resting its horny head on the back of the mare that I'll never unsee: it's drooling on her back just like Krug in LHOTL after he's just raped Mari. Traumatizing! There's also two revolting sex scenes late in the game that had me questioning my sanity: one involving a nasty dwarf in a g-string and the other a straight sex scene featuring The Beast in Heat banging a hooker. Goddamn Bruno, you were one sick fuck!

You mean all that slimy horse sex didn't have you reaching for the guacamole dip? Don't watch La Bete, the hot horsey love is lifted from that.

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

Is that right? I've seen LA BETE, but not in 20 years.

[agent999 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close agent999]

He also used it in Nun of Monza. It crops up a lot in films of the era.

[JonesyTheCat Member Find all posts View Profile Close JonesyTheCat]

EMILY THE CRIMINAL - Amazingly assured feature debut from writer/director John Patton Ford and starring Aubrey Plaza and Theo Rossi.
This one slots into my beloved Neo Noir sub-genre, sitting alongside the Safdie Bros GOOD TIMES, and Lynne Ramsay's woefully underrated YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE.
Simple and lean, Plaza plays an art school grad drawn into crime via a credit card fraud ring, who falls for Rossi, one of the leaders. Of course things go swimmingly well, and love conquers all, including inner turmoil in the gang and, spoiler alert, everyone lives happily everafter.

Okay, I am lying.

I really liked this one, and am anticipating more from writer/director Ford in the future. Gonna see if I can hunt down his previous short film PATROL now.

Also watched the oddball Toho heist/kiiiiind of Kaiju flick DOGORA, and the wonderfully psychedelic Shaw Bros wuxai fantasy PORTRAIT IN CRYSTAL (which in a roundabout way led me to this site).

Oh yeah, I also lived through THOR LOVE AND THUNDER, which was almond st unwatchable. For the record I really enjoy the MCU, and even love some of it. But Waititi showed zero grasp of the core story. You don't turn a film (superhero based or not) about a dead child and a woman with terminal cancer into a joke fest. The saving grace, barely, is the fact that Christian Bale can spin shit into gold onscreen, and that Hemsworth is so likeable as Thor.

All things said...it's been a good viewing day. In particular, EMILY and PORTRAIT we're both super satisfying.

[JonesyTheCat Member Find all posts View Profile Close JonesyTheCat]

FLUX GOURMET -
As a bonafide fan of writer/director Peter Strickland's work, I was still thrown for a bit of a loop with this latest offering about a performance art based gastronomic society, and their craft of "sonic catering" which is apparently a real thing which Strickland did with a collective in NYC years ago.

I'm still unpacking it all, which there are many proverbial boxes to go through, and I'm still not totally sure what I just watched...but it's another good one to scratch one's head over. Beautifully shot, tonally acute, weird and uncomfortable in a great way. Strickland could make a film about a tea cup and turn it into a creepyish tour de force.

[JonesyTheCat Member Find all posts View Profile Close JonesyTheCat]

Licorice pizza.

Very uneven film. More to like then dislike though. Some hilarious small parts and side plots for sure.

Still worth going to the cinema for though.

LICORICE PIZZA nails the era it takes place in, especially production design wise, and easily bests ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD's cgi rendered vision of (basically) the same IMHO.