Aaron, you're right on the money: http://www.manlymovie.net/2014/07/detai ... s-and.html

The first alternate ending sounds like what we should have gotten. Somebody should cobble together a file that has all of the extra content in one file. All that sounds like it'd be made into a better film overall.

The I Inside - 4/5

Cool psychological thriller/horror sort of like Jacob's Ladder, with much of the same surrealism - but it has enough of its own thing going not to just be a ripoff. It's a very dark and seedy film that keeps you in the dark about what's going on and also works well with suspense and the surreal. I liked the first act more than the two that followed, as the film loses something when it starts to reveal too much - maybe it would have been even better if the whole thing had made even LESS sense for longer. Overall this was raw and creepy. I enjoyed it.

Predator 2 - 2/5

A really stupid sequel to a classic movie. While I never enjoyed Predator as much as some do, it is definitely good and the last 20 minutes or so make the whole thing a must-watch. This one is filled with ludicrous plot elements - voodoo gang members in L.A.? What? - goofy acting, bad characters and a lot of padding-out of what should have been a quick, fast B-movie trip. This whole thing reeks of trying to be Big Trouble in Little China or something similar, except it's not nearly as fun or imaginative, despite some pretty cool visuals in the climax - but you have to wade through an hour and a half of nonsense to get there. The action is strictly OK and the pacing is pretty slow. If this were 80 minutes instead of two hours, maybe it'd be better.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes - 3.5/5

I didn't like the previous film very much, but this one isn't bad. The parts with the humans are pretty cliche and tired, the usual "dystopian future trying to survive" stuff we've seen too many times, and those characters are not all that captivating at all. But the parts with the apes, who have their own distinct characters and actually seem more emotive and interesting than the humans, are pretty well done. Beautiful cinematography doesn't hurt either, as the whole thing feels very epic and somber. The action isn't bad, but I don't think it's the strict focal point - I was more drawn in by the drama of the apes. Overall I'm not sure this is my usual kind of thing, but I didn't hate it.

Also rewatched Blair Witch, which I found a new appreciation for, and The Purge, which didn't translate all that well to home video. It's still better than most horror movies that come out in mainstream theaters now, but it's not all that great.

Because I need my ghost movie fix and trust Blumhouse with doing a better job than most, I checked out "Deliver Us From Evil" yesterday. It was like The Conjuring juxtaposed against gritty NYC Bronx setting, mixed with a little Stir of Echoes and Se7en. I liked Scott Derrickson's "Sinister" and this came out the same way. Decent exorcism scene finale but the 'creepy' scenes weren't as strong as a James Wan film. I've complained about this before but I just want an occult/haunted house movie that doesn't lean on another 'exorcism' grand finale. Joel McHale was great as Eric Bana's partner though.

I liked Planet of the Apes too. Couldn't help cheering for the apes. Humans piddle around with weird-ass experiments and it destroys them? Fine, no sympathy from me! Now I gotta wonder, whose side is Sasquatch on?

That was my problem with Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

I gotta disagree a bit.

I may see it again at the insistence of a friend who seems to agree with you, but I dunno, I just remember being really irritated by the entire thing aside from a few nice scenes with the monkey.

The stuff with James Franco and Caesar are indeed the best parts of the movie. The stuff with Franco and John Lithgow was really good too. Avatar was a much better example of the kind of movie you described "Rise..." as, if only because that movie shoves it in the viewer's face.

I liked Avatar in theaters for the visual adventure and size/scope of it...probably wouldn't care to see it otherwise now.

^Exactly my thoughts on it, the visual effects were amazing to see in theatres, but the movie itself wasn't all that good.

Finally got around to seeing Memento, and it is totally deserving of the praise I've heard for it over the years. I'm generally skeptical of the post-modern schematics being applied to movies as it is very easy to fuck off, but they pulled it off brilliantly. Some great twists, and the visual aesthetic was definitely on-point.

Been watching a fair number of movies lately since I'm hoarding TV shows so that I'll have something to watch in Korea.

I recently watched the Kill Bills, which were better than I remembered them being though they are a little lopsided in that the first movie gets all the cool action scenes while the second gets the serious drama - some evening out of the content would've helped, I think.

I also just saw Last Action Hero tonight for the first time. It started to pick up a bit toward the end but man was the pacing in this movie glacial. No reason this movie should've been 130 minutes long. Cool cameos and stuff though. Nowhere near Arnie's greatest but fits in nicely alongside lesser movies like Kindergarten Cop and Eraser.

Bad Santa held up surprisingly well. Some really gut-busting laughs and I couldn't get enough of Marcus berating the shit out of Willy. Thurman Merman is a fucking riot - about pissed myself at the bloodstained wooden pickle. Great movie.

I could have sworn I'd never seen Zodiac before but now that I finally sat down and cleared it from my queue (been meaning to watch it but for some reason whenever I was in the mood the nearly 3-hour run time put me off of it) I'm pretty sure I have seen this before, but maybe I was drunk or not really paying attention or something. Anyway it's a pretty good movie for sure, lots of great cop drama and twists and turns, but being tied to a still unsolved case that took place mostly over the course of a decade, it naturally was pretty anti-climatic and just sort of frustrating with the "two years later..." stuff. I'm sure a certain amount of fictionalizing took place anyway, but I think they would've been better off deviating a bit from the facts in this case.

Finally, The Silence of the Lambs still rules hard. For some reason the early conversations Clarice has with him, and the Buffalo Bill scenes, are what stuck in my head but clearly the centerpiece of the movie is Lecter's transfer to that building, his conversation with Clarice there and his subsequent escape from captivity. Hopkins of course puts on a powerhouse performance but Jodie Foster is brilliant as well, if more subtle. Timeless classic for good reason.

Dragon Tattoo remake was indeed disappointing, apart from the opening credits sequence of course. Simply put the original is better because the remake is bloated and overdone. I fell asleep during the first half hour of Benjamin Button, the CGI looked ridiculous and I wasn't interested in the premise. I kept asking people around me with sincerity whether it was a Fincher movie or not.

Jodorowsky's Dune was pretty interesting if you've wondered what a Dune movie would have been like without Hollywood fucking it up, and a pretty entertaining documentary in its own right. Jodo comes across as this crazy forgotten genius and some of his stories like how he got Dali and HR Giger on board are just great to listen to. Sad that we will never see his vision and it looks like the best we can hope for is an animated film.

Under the Skin - Scarlett Johansson drives around in a van picking up young dudes so she can take them back to her place where she ........ shit, I saw the movie but I'm still not clear what she was doing with them. Using their blood to revive Uncle Frank? No, sorry, that was Hellraiser.

Honest, I tried to stay awake during this. I even turned subtitles on because the accents were so thick I could barely understand one word per sentence. Didn't really help me understand the movie though. Some call it a Kubrick-esque masterpiece, but I found it slow, dull, repetitive, and visually pretentious. The music was annoying too.

The final scene was kind of cool, however, which is all that saves this from being the worst thing I've seen since Pain & Gain.

I watched it yesterday and it was very interesting. I love Jodo but his uncompromising nature crucified the film from the start. I mean, it would had been fucking awesome if it was made but he wanted a 15 million budget, Salvador Dali, Orson Wells, Mick Jagger to play in it, Pink Floyd to do the OST and he wanted the film to be 14 hours or so! It was fun to see how he created this team of genius creators who went on to create Alien though. I felt bad when they were talking about how all the Hollywood studios thought it was awesome but just couldn't accept the project, kind of Jodo's fault, really, I'm sure he knew it would never pass with the movie businessmen.

Took this screenshot when Jodo was talking of Lynch's Dune and how much it sucked!

Any fans of low budget splatter films on here?
Stuff like Premutos, Nikos The Impaler, Bone Sickness, Philosophy Of A Knife (although calling that one a splatter film is sort of a stretch)?

I'm gonna add Dead Alive and Violent Shit to that list. Obviously one's significantly lower in budget than the other (Dead Alive was $3 million, Violent Shit was $2,000), but both were loaded with gore and splatter. Dead Alive's also one of the funniest movies I've ever seen in my life.

^ Awesome, everyone hates on the Violent Shit series but I love all three of 'em (I don't include Karl The Butcher as a Violent Shit movie). Dude could you recommend me more low budget splatter film directors in the vein of Olaf Ittenbach and Andreas Schnaas?

So basically just complete zero budget shot on shitteo? If you want something with a fair amount of gore but genuinely wretched as a movie, try Las Vegas Bloodbath. It's a total piece of shit, but there's a lot of gore, so that might interest you.

I've got Las Vegas Bloodbath on a 50 movie DVD set released by Pendulum Pictures, I enjoyed it honestly hahaha, but I live for microbudget films, it's hard to find one I genuinely hate man!

How about Woodchipper Massacre? That movie looks like it had an even lower budget than Las Vegas Bloodbath.

Actually I haven't seen that one, gonna see if I can find it streaming somewhere man!
You ever watch any of Timo Rose's movies? The Mutation series is pretty badass for being so low budget, and Barricade is pretty badass too, shit Barricade (2007) even looks like it was professionally made ahaha, plus it's all gory as fuck!

LAH is fantastic. It got buried by Jurassic Park when it was released and subsequently was trashed by everyone, which is a shame. Eraser, however....is terrible. All the money went to Arnold and that stupid airplane stunt. Cheap production, bad cast, all terrible. In fact, after True Lies made $$$ Arnold pretty much shit the bed for 9 straight years, destroying his film reputation:

Junior
Eraser
Jingle all the Way
Batman and Robin
End of Days
The Sixth Day
Collateral Damage

And then he crawled back to Terminator 3 to salvage whatever he had left. What a shame. His last couple...The Last Stand, Escape Plan and Sabotage are all fucking great but I think people have written him off because of age.

The Last Stand was fun enough but hardly a return to his glory days. Escape Plan was fucking utterly miserable trash and...oh, Exigence.

Jingle All the Way is awesome. I can't put into words why it is, so it might not be. But god damn it, it is! As for End of Days, you just don't possess fun receptors if Arnie shooting THE DEVIL with a machinegun doesn't inspire goodwill in you.

I really enjoyed The Last Stand, hoping to watch Escape Plan soon, although I haven't really heard much positive about it

I'm still not sure why people hate on Escape Plan so much; I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. It felt like an honest throwback to that high-budgeted type of 90's action movie. I also have a guilty soft spot for Eraser and Jingle All The Way.

Coincidentally, I watched an Arnie movie yesterday. Sabotage is probably one of my first latter-day Arnie movies that I watched. I haven't seen Escape Plan or the other ones. Sabotage was just alright I'd say, nothing great about it. But it somehow managed to keep me hooked on throughout. The plot is kinda predictable and when you realize the cause-effect relationships early on, it's easy to spot where the movie is going. There are a multitude of characters in this movie, each bearing their own traits. The gist of the storyline would be - a bunch of special forces DEA agents get caught on the wrong side of the fence with drug cartel members. The movie's watchable, it's got some good action, few nasty dismemberment scenes and a steady storyline.

Rating: 5/10

It wasnt bad, just forgettable. I was a big fan of Prison Break and this felt like a condensed version of the first season. Another thing is that with Sly and Arnold being in the same movie, youd think it would be a hard R action movie(this does have action, just not that much).

Yeah, that's the thing. It had very little action which was kind of a disappointment considering the cast, but still could've been pulled off effectively if it weren't for the fact that there's somehow zero chemistry between Arnie and Stallone and the whole plot and writing are just utter shit. Plus, what action it *did* have wasn't even cool - just lame CGI and boring choreography/gunplay.

Cecil Trachenburg from The Agony Booth spoke highly of it in a best-and-worst-of-2013 video review, so that's why I decided to watch it. I absolutely love his video reviews and the dude is usually spot-on and knows his movies, but here I have to agree with bats. It's pretty lame.

I am weirdly excited for The Battle of the Five Armies. More Smaug is always a good thing.

Horrendous and doesn't live up to the name at all.

Oh I'm not saying it's any good at all. It is indeed fucking horrible.

Oldboy (2013) - 2.5/5

This movie is trying to do two things at once - Americanize the themes and story of Oldboy while also trying to keep the general Asian flavor of the action and storytelling style. Because of this, this American remake is a pretty stunted trudge through material much better delivered on the original a decade ago. Josh Brolin turns in a very weak performance as the lead, only occasionally mustering up the kind of fervent anger I wanted from the character - too often he just reeks of bad kitsch. While the original was over the top as well, it came off as a lot more earnest and energetic than this film did. Samuel L. Jackson is out of place here and his ridiculous costume is just icing on the cake for how strange he is in this - very odd choice for the role he was placed in, as well. The few changes made to the original story could have been okay, but the overall message feels muddled and the pacing is drastically slower and less exciting here. Overall it's not awful, but I wouldn't see it again over the original.

If we're talking about low budget movies with gore, someone has to talk about the Guinea Pig series. Those things were made for like, no money, but were nothing but lingering shots on wild gore and dismemberment (at least the first two were; they branched off into other odd but gory stories later in the series). They basically did torture porn before Saw and Hostel made it a household thing in horror, and were so convincing at it the director had to prove in court that no one was actually murdered in the film.

How Charlie Sheen thought the second movie was a snuff film is baffling to me. There are so many obviously set up shots in that movie that only somebody with the mental capacity of, well, Charlie Sheen could think it was real. The first movie looks much more real than the second one, and there are some genuinely chilling moments in it. I'm especially fond of just how empty and depressing the shots of the girl hanging in the net in the forest are. The trailer is kind of terrifying, although MASSIVE spoiler alert since it basically gives away the most disturbing parts of the movie.



And while I'm talking about Japanese torture porn movies, anyone ever see Grotesque? I watched it sometime earlier this year, and my brother got physically ill from the 5 minutes he watched of it. No joke.

Havent read the book, but from what my dad told me, minor spoiler considering TABA ... big spoiler for BOTFA . Really wonder what the runtime will be. I definitely WONT be seeing it in the HFR, if even 3d. I wont be fooled again with it. Ive downloaded a regraded version, where the tint is changed, and it looks so much better than the HFR.

Well I don't have a problem with that, I just don't know why they felt the need to call it "The Hobbit" at all. Something tells me the films would have been a lot better had they taken even more liberties with the plot, doing whatever they pleased. Bilbo seemed shoehorned into large chunks because someone felt he needed to be there, and the bits with Gollum and Smaug were way too long - even for Jackson. I did think the part with the trolls and the dinner party were well done and coincided with my memories of the book. Other than that the best bits were those not in the book.

It was...well, a torture porn movie. It wasn't all that good movie wise, but you're unlikely to find anything more outlandishly gory.

A Serbian Film jumps out to me as the "shocking" torture film that my friends have issues with. It honestly wasn't that gory or violent when compared to some other options out there, but the sexual sadism aspect really seems to irk people.