After all the shit that's happened in Ferguson, New York, and Cleveland I had to re-watch Boyz in tha Hood again. Over 20 years later and that film's still relevant.
Really makes me want an Olde English 800 right now. Not because I'm a drunk (well, kinda), but because of how fucked things still are racially in the "greatest country on earth"

I haven't seen that movie and I always wanted to but then they released it on bluray and the cover spoils the whole damn plot.

No, wait, wrong movie. Meant the spoiler on the cover of Menace II Society (which I also haven't seen).

Yesterday I saw Predestination and The Hundred-foot Journey (yeah, I know, old ladies type of movie)


Predestination was pretty cool, I was expecting a more detectivesque (cinema noir if you will) approach but instead I got a really intriguing sci fi suspense/drama. The plot was a bit hard to follow at the beginning, but it left no unanswered questions and was ultimately satisfying. Hawke, good as always. Sarah Snook was the big surprise, her rol was pretty complex and needed a lot of transformation through the film. It seemed like the main time travel thing was completely dragged out once the dudette's story began, but it was good enough to keep me entertained and at the end it was completely necessary. Maybe the editing of the movie is kinda messy at times but I enjoyed this little sci fi flick.

The Thing (2011) - 0/5

Man this was sad to fucking watch. Just so bad in every way. Lame dialogue that's either science bullshitting about nothing, pointing out the obvious or filler. Bad, bad special effects. A storyline that rips off the original but isn't even close to as suspenseful - mostly because of how bad the effects are and how silly it would look if they slowed down the action a bit and let you admire them like you could the effects in the original. This was a woeful experience and I now can never get that hour and forty minutes back. Just proof that Hollywood doesn't give two shits about horror - a lazy, boring movie that I don't think anyone was terribly invested in making.

Empyreal, I've read your blog. You've got a lot of woeful experiences and time you'll never get back.

Anyway, I didn't hate The Thing (2011) but it was not very good and entirely redundant. Now the John Carpenter version, damn! First time I saw it was a monthly late night horror screening they do in my city. It's always a good time, they have it in this big, old, beautiful theater crammed full of horror aficionados and run a bar in the lobby. It was a great shared experience, very different from conventional movie showings. People were going nuts for Kurt Russell and the theater just erupted at the first blast of gore! They even did a trivia contest before the screening and gave away bottles of J&B whisky. It was a riotously good time.

Rec 4- This went from a good found footage zombie series, to a dull, generic, zombie on a ship movie. To make things worse, almost all of the action is shaky cam.

It was just a waste of time. The great thing about the original was that you didn't need to see what happened before it - the mystery made it scary. And yeah man...sounds awesome. Gotta start going to shit like that myself.

The thing about the Thing prequel is it actually started off with some awesome practical effects but the director sucked balls and didn't understand the techniques involved in filming practical effects and replaced everything with the shitty, shitty CGI in the terrible final product. That said, even those awesome effects wouldn't have saved the rest of that movie.

Even with their special effects in the movie, it still would have been a fucking piece of trash with awful writing and no suspense, though.

Some people never learn.

John Carpenter has done some great work. The Thing is one of my all-time favorites, but movies like Dark Star are almost criminally overlooked.

I haven't seen Menace either (I always thought there was two parts of it or something since the II thing, I guess it was just one movie though), but it sounds pretty similar to Boyz in the Hood. Definitely worth a watch just because of Ice Cube not being a dad that drives a minivan and Laurence Fishburne talking about gentrification (I just realized Magrudergrind sampled that bit of dialogue in one of their songs)

More fundamentally than that, the mystery of the Norway camp already tells the story the prequel wanted to tell. You see an axe in the wall, you can make a pretty accurate guess as to what went on there. We don't need 90 minutes of lame exposition-filled dialogue and CGI aliens to tell us what we already know.

Babadook is super good - go see it.

Re: my blog - I don't regret most of the stuff on it. Sure it's fuckin terrible at times, but watching those movies with my friends and riffing on them, then doing those reviews, is a lot of fun. A Talking Cat for instance, is like the new Troll 2 or The Room - hysterical. I stopped doing just blatantly bad stuff I knew I'd hate a long time ago, with some exceptions or things that I didn't expect aside.



Exactly. I really can't think of any movie in recent memory quite so amazingly pointless.

Yeah, I meant my comment jokingly. I can tell you have fun with it and enjoy reading you tear apart lousy horror films.

I liked the initial plan in 2008 which was an entire Norwegian cast with actors that were look-a-likes of the first movie, entirely in the Norwegian language. It was meant to be slow burn with nothing revealed until the third act, and no CGI whatsoever, but I guess that idea got thrown out the window when Eric Heisserer (writter of the A Nightmare on Elm Street remake and Final Destination 5) became the script writer.

Yes. Best horror movie of the year so far. A perfect mixture of Sinister and The Shining with the photography of Melancolia (LVT) the direction was flawless, even more so considering the extremely low budget. The acting of that fucking kid was superb. Another impressive aussie horror film is Starry Eyes, some sort of Mulholland Drive meets The Black Swan but with a notorious indie edge. The suspense is great and the lead actress also carries the film incredibly into the dark twisted world of hollywood film productions.





Yesterday I saw Deux Jours Une Nuit, the so-hyped new film of the Dardenne brothers starring Marion Cotillard ♥♥♥ you get your usual Dardenne doze of social drama and heavy character study, I found some similarities with Rosetta (to me, their absolute masterpiece and a timeless must see for every cinema freak) Marion was great as the depressed young mother trying to keep her job by convincing their partners to renounce to their bonus pay so she can stay. Maybe I'm a little biased because I fucking love Marion but I think DJUN is a strong contender for the Oscars for best foreing movie. Not that the oscars mean something anyway.

Even though I did not like The Babadook, all the praise has me showing it to all my friends to get their reactions. Nobody I know liked it. They all agree it built up well but then completely shits itself. It definitely not scary and the hype makes it all the more disappointing. I want it to be better. Still kinda do.

On the flipside, saw Haunted House 2 and laughed all the way through. Funnier than the first one. It's on Netflix and my roommates and I have already watched it several times. Between that and the new Bill Burr special, I've fallen on the floor laughing several times this week.

I didn't want to say anything at the time but from what I've seen of your posts I was fairly certain you weren't going to like it.

And nah, the last act was really solid and a much more cohesive finale than a lot of horror films these days. To be fair, any review I've seen from people who didn't like the film just hated the ending but it made perfect sense to me.

That's odd. Weren't you the one hyping it up for weeks in the movie thread though?

Hmm that's interesting, because that was voted one of the worst films of 2014.

I love Marion Cotillard as well and was pretty stoked to watch her on this film, definitely a great movie that showcases her huge talent and also the ability of the directors to actually make you care for a character that isn't perfect yet not a fucking train wreck either. I'm confident we'll keep seeing top-notch performances from her in the future.

It's a Wayans comedy...what do you expect? 100000000000x better than the recent Scary Movies. Completely different level.

You are literally the only person who likes the Wayanses. They like themselves less than you like them.

This just makes me much more interested in seeing it than everyone telling me it made them shit themselves with fear. Christ knows we haven't got enough scary films already.

No kidding - Nightmare remake was another with absolutely no purpose or reason for it. Awful.

Big Hero 6 - 3.75/5

Fun, light hearted kids flick with some pretty intense scenes for that genre action-wise. But mostly it sticks to the conventions of the genre. Story's about a bunch of kids who become a superhero team around this huge "nurse" robot called Baymax, and try to solve the murder of the main character's brother. It isn't perfect and doesn't have the kind of finesse or poignancy of an Up or even Wreck-It Ralph, but it's a vibrant, fun adventure and has some good laughs. The best moments are in the beginning before the team is formed, when it's just main character Hiro and Baymax scrapping it out alone trying to solve things. Later on I felt it got a bit too formulaic and predictable, albeit still watchable.

St. Vincent - 3.5/5

A nice sort of comedy with some drama in the middle about Bill Murray as an alcoholic gambler helping a little kid do better at life. The acting was good and there were some funny moments, although it never really got great. The film created a world you wanted to see more of with its recognizable and quirky characters, but I dunno, something about the writing just struck me as too blunt and didn't really have much in the way of subtlety or wit. It's definitely pretty good though and worth a watch - especially if you're nostalgic for these kinds of 'unlikely bonding' movies we don't get much anymore.

The Babadook needs to get out on Netflix already.

So I went to the movies with my family on Sunday and watched the final part of The Hobbit on a 4DX auditorium with 3D image. It was a great experience to be honest and the movie, while not groundbreaking, was a great send-off to the saga. The acting was good for the most part, the battle scenes were epic and the landscapes mesmerizing. It's gonna be sad getting used to the idea that there'll be nothing as epic to watch at the cinema this time next year (unless, you know, SW VII becomes a critical and blockbuster success).

Hmm... I thought the new Hobbit was a bit underwhelming and a let-down. Granted, it had its moments and the scenery was great, but it was lacking something... essential, for the lack of a better word; I dont know. Also,

The Damned/Gallows Hill (2012)

2/5

Another modern horror movie in the vein of ''a couple of people enter a house in pretty much the middle of nowhere''. It's nothing original but atleast the movie didn't end as predictable as I had imagined. Still, you're left with predictable roles (the hot woman, hero guy, ect) that aren't very beneficial to the actual movie. There weren't any scary moments to be found, either...thankfully the gore and shock scenes were kept to a minimum but in the end I felt like this movie definitely lacked atmosphere. Definitely not worth the 10 euro I bought this for. Damn you, impulsive behavior!

Dark Star is great, nice one. I've also always enjoyed Prince of Darkness, even though it kinda fumbles a bit right at the very end.

And I used to read Emp's blog at work all of the time, but I wish he would do more z-grade 70s and 80s horror films. Too much newer horror stuff that I personally don't care for.

This summarizes Ex more than he could ever know.

I'm with the bandwagon that loves Babadook. What I loved about the movie was the story line. It also lacked the gimmicky jump-scares and had a terrific plot build-up. I'll admit, I don't regularly watch scary movies for lack of interest. But I compared this to Annabelle, which I also saw sometime back and Babadook is light years ahead of it.

Over the past couple of months, I've seen most of the big named Hollywood flicks. Out of them, the movie that really made an impression on me was 'Gone Girl'. I thought it was really beautifully made. Rosamund Pike is brilliant in it. She probably had to go out of her comfort zone for this role. Sinister yet effortless. The movie was gripping and it had me glued to my seat throughout.

Exodus was a complete waste of my time. I don't know why did I even go for it. It was overlong as hell and quite boring.

I read the book of Gone Girl and the movie followed it to a tee, except for one scene which went way more over the top and was that much more awesome:

I think Predesination was easily the most disappointing movie of the year, although I shouldn't be surprised given Ethan Hawke's putrid losing streak. All I can say without spoiling it is there is a 55 minute boring set-up with unnecessary dramatic music because 'movie', then the film actually turns into a mild thriller with barely any semblance of suspense, just a straight mess of a so-called time travel film that's desperately trying to be smart, but failing in all the areas where Looper excelled.

Born out of a childhood of renting horror movies blind from Blockbuster. Sometimes you get good ones - other times, well there's got to be something to do to remedy watching shitty movies.

I'd do more Z-grade old movies but too many of those in a row gets boring I think.

About to watch The Babadook and Starry Eyes if I can fit both in tonight...

I coulda told you that. We already have The Ten Commandments and The Prince of Egypt, so we don't need any more adaptations of that story.

Also, it's a pretty bad sign when the gritty epic 2014 film's "Parting of the Red Sea" scene looks more fake and cartoony than, well, the 1998 cartoon's did.

And hey, at least the people in the 1998 cartoon have the correct skin color.

Probably better music too.