Oh yeah, he did make Pusher - I remember thinking that was very good. Didn't see the sequels yet. I forgot that was him.

Only God Forgives in particular was an insanely awful film. That was bordering on infuriating with how asinine it was, how little happened or meant anything. Bronson was also one of the most unpleasant things I've ever sat through.

Bronson was crazy, I kinda enjoyed Drive, but hey seriously, watch all the Pusher movies. Damn.

The Neon Demon is a masterpiece in my opinion. 100% style over substance, but that's the point.

Does anyone else still get a kick out of the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies? I'm speaking mainly of the first two, as it's been too long since I've seen the third to remember it. They're a barrel of fun, and I enjoy them just as much now as when I was a kid... except now I'm not compelled to pretend to be a ninja turtle after watching them. I'd cite these movies as good examples of how cheesiness can be a good thing, or how it can take what's already good and make it better. (I have a theory that cheesiness isn't good or bad in itself, but can make something that's good or bad better or worse.)

Yeah? It didn't get very good reviews from what I read but it's free on Prime right now so I'll probably check it out.

Just watched Sicario. Fuck me man, that movie was intense. I remember hearing good things back when it came out and since it's also free on Prime right now I went and watched it. I don't even know, that's not my typical area of interest when it comes to films, it was just fucking crazy. I know stuff like that happens all the time in the real world but seeing it play out... damn.

Good choice. It's a really gritty movie and it's a very real look at people and their worlds. I didn't expect it to be so confronting when I saw it at the cinema but it's certainly enjoyable, if very bleak.

Looking forward to the Sicario sequel next year, Soldado. Here's hoping it keeps that tense atmosphere of the first.

I wasn't even aware there was going to be a sequel! I'll be keen to see that one.

Sicario is awesome - no clue there was a sequel planned...apparently it isn't directed by Denis Villenueve, so I guess it could go either way. We'll see I suppose.

Why the hell is it whenever Nicolas Winding Refn is discussed, there's no bloody mention of Valhalla Rising? By far and away the best thing he's ever done...

Oh yeah, and the director of Soldado has quite a good track record himself, having directed Gomorrah and ACAB - All Cops Are Bastards, so he's well suited to this type of thing. Apparently it's going to focus more on Josh Brolin's character though, which is a shame as I found Benicio Del Toro's performance and character to be the most interesting thing about Sicario by a long shot.

Anyone here seen the Berserk movie trilogy? I found it to be absolutely disturbing yet somehow inspiring. I found it comparable to falling in love just before getting kicked in the balls and dumped. Totallty unexpected and shocking end. 5/5 stars.

You should read the manga if you liked the movies, the comic gets even crazier and depraved.

^Yassss. And the anime series. It does end quite abruptly but my god the dense atmosphere and tension is unparalleled.

Been watchin' a bunch of movies recently, may as well do a dump.

Green Room
Pretty ace thriller about a punk band who manage to find themselves on the bad side of a bunch of Neo-nazis after (stupidly) getting involved in a fatal stabbing. I liked all the "living the life of a member of a shitty punk band" stuff, which was fun and enjoyable with the shitty cafe gig and the total failure interview, and the initial tension period is amazing. It's both threatening and exciting, and still a lot of fun as you try and see how these people try to work their way through a really dangerous situation without having any idea with how to deal with it, and the stuff with Patrick Stewart is equally engrossing as he tries to figure out the best way to deal with the issue and the consequences of what his lower nazi-goons have done. It's pretty nice seeing him move from actually trying to limit damage and dealing with the situation above board to dog attacks and sneaky body disposal, and having those plans ruined by both his own subordinates and the panicked band. When it hits the fan it's also a massive success as the brutality and violence is really intense, sadly the last third or so tails off into a bit of a standard and less visceral path after the guns come out. Still, really well made, tense and gripping movie.

Deadpool
Fun, fresh, good action and good writing, great subversions of the formula while not seeming up itself at all. Was a lot of fun.

Swiss Army Man
I fucking loved this. As funny as it is heartfelt as it is weird. The weirdness is super disarming and the writing, acting and look of the whole film is really inviting and I got wholly on board onto the messages of friendship, love, self honesty, society and farting. It doesn't sacrifice ANY fun or weirdness or hilarity for all the indie messages and I really can't think of a single comedy which managed to have "something to stick with you" and not have to take itself out of comedy mode, this does and it's amazing. Also the end is one of the best things ever put on film. Only mild downside was that the music sorta out hipstered me a bit, like the montage song was fine without the lyrics describing everything that had happened since the movie itself had done such a great job showing it, but it's suitably weird and stupid and silly and it fits the movie for what it is, basically every second after the water scene was the best thing ever.

31
Total meh movie, I mean it's a Rob Zombie film so it's not like he's a reliable source of quality, but this was just kinda shit. Felt edited down hard with the violence thanks to excessive shaky cam and "he just gets stabbed" kills, which given it's horror Running Man that's a big no no. And you get the feeling he wanted to more or less just make a movie about Doom Head but only found 25 minutes to squeeze him in through the silly Hunger Games set up, given his best work is heavily about hanging out with the villains it's a big fail.

Enemy
One of these pretty much boring but intriguing to talk about movies. Couldn't say I liked it much overall because the drab yellow look was nasty and the first 45 minutes are pretty much pointless given the movie makes it pretty clear once the doppelgangers meet that so the whole struggle to have them meet is kinda a waste of time. I also wanted to know if ANYONE got what the spiders were about the first time. After doing some reading I can appreciate it better, as it does make for some necessary striking imagery, but for me I definitely couldn't link it to the greater theme and purpose. Once that purpose is made clear (for the extent the movie is clear) it's pretty enjoyable, but it's basically just that last half hour. Sorta want to watch it again to figure out if it's , but on the other hand, I was bored and found it unpleasant for over half of it's run time so I don't really want to either.

Space Cop
The trailer sure was terrible, but I'm a big RLM fan so I was hoping for something... not the worst thing I've ever seen. I was hoping for some kind of loving tribute to no budget schlock sci fi with some sort of clever understanding and genre savvy take on the idea and some charming no budget work arounds for the shitty effects (like the moon base for a very small instance) and an attention to detail. But instead it's the worst parody ever made. The jokes are horrible, the acting sucks in a non-charming way, it's got a smug "lol you can't judge us it's MEANT to be terrible" attitude, with all the unwatchable tropes of intentionally bad anything, and seriously, the jokes are horrible. Mike wrote a better movie in the last Half in the Bag.

Good call on Valhalla Rising, I was drunk when I wrote my post about Pusher, Bronson and Drive so I forgot, but it's indeed fucking cool.

Didn't know about a sequel to Sicario, but fuck me, that's good news.

Valhalla Rising was OK but kinda disappears up its own asshole partway through and gets incoherent and artsy-fartsy. I'd put a lot of his movies way above it.

Echoing all the praise for Arrival. Just absolutely phenomenal, and the soundtrack (both the orchestral and ambient parts) was equally amazing.

Really want to see that especially now that I know it's the same director as Sicario.

Yup... Villenueve has done Prisoners, Enemy, Sicario and now Arrival - the last of which seems to be really reaching people finally. I think all four are fucking superlative films. He is my favorite new director right now.

I haven't seen or even heard of the other two but Sicario was riveting and even when there was shit I didn't particularly want to see I couldn't look away. How do those other two stack up Emp?

I think Sicario might be my favorite of all of them. Prisoners is a really awesome crime/detective film with excellent performances and a huge amount of tension, and Enemy is a slow, oozing psychological type film like something David Lynch might do, but even weirder and more opaque in some ways (well, that was my perception on my first viewing anyway). That one is very contentious among some, apparently, but I found it super weird, cool and hypnotic.

Cool I'll give then a go.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_cont ... qrgxZLd_gE

New Scorsese out in December with Garfield, Driver and Neeson. This looks incredible.

I actually think it looks kind of...awful. I just can't take Andrew Garfield seriously. He looks so out of place.

He does look iffy, but it's hard to tell from just one trailer. Adam Driver looked pretty believable, and the subject matter looks very interesting.

Don't really care about Andrew Garfield, he was great in Never Let Me Go. It's more the subject matter of missionaries trying to enforce their religious beliefs on others, I have no desire to watch that.

I know I'm behind with movies but I saw two movies today: Arrival and The Accountant.

Arrival was good and it kept me enthralled throughout but the ending was weird....


The Accountant was good, too, even though I couldn't follow all of the storyline. I was entertained so that was enough.

Seeing Arrival next week. Keen.

Observed the film Phantasm recently. It was quite a good b-movie, but on this edition of it someone had the psychotic idea to include an opening forward with the star who talked about the history of the movie and then suddenly explained the entire plot and all the twists right before the film starts. Who in the love of fuck thought that was a good idea???!!!

Anyway, loved the death orb. The brain-drill-fountain has to be one of the best on-screen kills in cinema history.

That's awful. New editions just figure everyone has already seen it.

I hate most menus on blu-rays, 9 times out of 10 there'll be some spoilery clip in the menu, and then there's like story-mode/extended cut/limited cut/2016 cut and all this unnecessary shit that you have to skim through to get to the actual movie. Can't find the remote? Don't worry by the time you do the movie is already spoiled.

You might want to check out Phantasm II if you liked the first. The sequel is more straightforward, more action packed, and less cerebral from what I recall.

Phantasm II is my favourite. The atmosphere of the first is great but it's a bit ho-hum with little movement, II took everything of the first and added thrills and excellent 80's cheese.

Just got my tickets to see Rogue One. Stoked.

I think the Phantasm series might be my favorite horror series overall. Each entry has its strengths and weaknesses (though I curse myself for not seeing Ravager yet), and it's all so dream-like at its most pleasant and nightmarish at its worst that making concrete sense of it doesn't work. The Tall Man is so damn iconic and it's a shame Angus Scrimm passed earlier this year.

Plus, that theme...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9vpG_b8beQ

I'm going with everybody else and suggesting you watch the second one. It's a bit more action-packed than the rest of the series and introduces the quad-shotgun, plus the effects are incredible due to the budget Universal allotted. Stay away from the fourth and fifth unless you see the first three and really, really enjoy them.

Saw a bunch of movies over the Thanksgiving holiday.

Thelma and Louise - A classic of feminist film and a fun flick all around... very adventurous, the two leads are great and the way the mood shifts between tense and laborous and more fun and jovial makes for a balanced viewing. I wasn't blown away but I did enjoy this and I could see myself watching it again sometime.

Allied - It's a Robert Zemeckis film, so it's got a very polished sheen and a professional aura all around it. I liked this better than Flight, but less than The Walk, to compare it to other recent films of his. Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard did excellent and the story was slow-building but engaging, with a lot of dramatic intrigue and well-written romance. I'd thought this would be more psychological from the trailer, but the drama we did get was pretty damned good. If there was a flaw, it was just that the movie didn't go as far as it could've with the character development, so the whole thing felt very Hollywood in an almost archaic way these days - very feel-good and cinematic, but with a certain polished sheen that doesn't really lend itself to realism. Whether that's good depends on personal taste.

Battle Royale - I thought this was fun but not really that amazing at the end of the day. The violence and the fast-paced gore were fun, and I liked the energy the whole thing had. But too much of the time was spent on frankly dull moments where they tried to build characters or have some romantic storyline go on. There were too many characters to pull that off, and what we did get just felt soggy and dated. But the gore was fun.

Nocturnal Animals - Seriously good film. Trippy, odd, sophisticated and artful. I liked that it didn't pander or talk down to you. More was said through actions and visuals than words, and the plot was simple on the surface but more layered when you really look at it. This wasn't what I expected it to be, but the way it tied in its various different POVs and built up characters was expertly done. Masterful shit.

The Lazarus Effect - Pretty god awful new horror film about how bad science is as characters try to reanimate the dead - yes, we should be scared of science, what an astute judgment, movie. Let's all just go live without electricity by candlelight again. Fuck me. Like Reanimator if it took itself way too seriously - yet, Reanimator is the much better and more well-written film compared to this. This has shitty characters and a lack of any real good scares or atmosphere, save for one excellently creepy moment featuring Olivia Wilde. But otherwise it's total garbage.

We were in the mood to check out some old Canadian horror last night so we watched Black Christmas. Holy fuck is that movie unsettling creepy as hell! Possibly the creepiest slasher I've ever seen. I notice as well that a lot of pre-80s horror is a lot creepier than 80's horror. Then again most things in the 80's were just over the top cheesy so maybe to be expected.

Also always fun to watch movies and TV shows filmed or set in Toronto too. UofT still looks the same haha.

The only thing I didn't like too much about Black Christmas was that the ending just sorta...happened. The build, though, especially when all of the girls are in the living room and Margot Kidder answers the phone, is one hell of a tense ride.

I'd like to pinpoint when horror as a genre turned from the grime of the 70s and early 80s to the polish of the late 80s through the 90s. I almost want to say the turning point was Return of the Living Dead (1985), as it blended its horror with dark humor and every shot looks crisp yet oddly lived in, but I'm not ready to commit to that. I do think that's when horror started adding more comedy, though, and it wasn't long after ROTLD that we had Freddy overtly cracking jokes.


Did you watch the theatrical cut or DC? The DC actually includes newer footage shot specifically for it that attempts to give more backstory to each character and their relationships but drags a bit because of it.

This struck me as a horrible Flatliners knock-off without the charm that Kiefer Sutherland used to bring to his roles pre-24, so I skipped it. Glad to know I made the right choice.

Yeah Lazarus Effect was shit. It was like some kind of direct to video thing from 2005. But it was a major theater flick with Blumhouse productions - just crazy.

I think I must have seen the director's cut of Battle Royale, then. Maybe the original is leaner, meaner, more fun, etc.

Battle Royale is good but has those lame shoehorned soap opera elements that get tiresome. And a bunch of stock-standard model-esque characters that aren't particularly cool, memorable or interesting. It's too much a reflection of Japanese culture.

Flatliners was such a disappointing movie. I tried really hard to like it because it was the tail end of all those good 80's brat pack movies. I think Joel Schumacher was a major reason it was so vapid overall.