Don't mention Martyrs in the same breath as those turds, Empyreal. It's a great movie.

Saw Silver Linings Playbook in my ongoing quest to gain Snowgrave's approval. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. The acting is surprisingly great from everyone involved (especially Bradley "I made the Hangover and Limitless but now I'm figuring out I should maybe try that acting thing" Cooper). Sure the message is pretty unrealistic and the ending is predictable, but it's a tightly paced, well characterized film with a somewhat accurate portrayal of mental illness. Also DeNiro isn't given that much to do, but he does it well. Which is a first I've seen from him in the last ten years of so.
There are certain things that shouldn't work (a dance competition filled with urgency!) but somehow do, and I wasn't overly impressed with Lawrence, even though she's never looked prettier, but for some reason it kept my attention the whole way through and I never once glanced at my watch.

Some people put up some good arguments for it, but I never liked it at all.

Martyrs was interesting. It was an experience. Not sure if I liked/disliked it.

I was expecting something like Haute Tension and it's definitely something in its own league, whatever league that may be.

The league of New French Extremity.

Haute Tension I saw years ago on VOD and I loved it.

That's kind of my opinion; I definitely wouldn't put it in the same category as A Serbian Film, as it definitely had some good parts to it (I especially liked the ending), but I had problems with the pacing being rather disjointed, and how the story was basically comprised of two halves with little relation to one another. Once the second girl is captured, her relationship to the first girl doesn't matter anymore, and she could have been anyone. It might have been interesting if they had tried telling it out of chronological order (there were some flashbacks to their childhood, but nothing that significant). Also the resolution to the first girl's story was just plain weak - "it's all in her head" is a really lame conclusion when that's the most obvious, least interesting one. They made it out to be supernatural at first, but then it just ended up being schizophrenia or something. I wasn't impressed. Still, the movie did have weight, and I thought the ending was actually pretty compelling.

That was basically my assessment. Messy pacing, jumbled up parts with nothing to do with one another and numerous plotholes...really doesn't work as a good 'extreme/shocking' kind of film when you have so many problems with the basic tenets of filmmaking I don't think. Just didn't do anything for me.

Haute Tension I thought was amazing though - one of the only films to ever really scare me. It doesn't now, since I've seen it a couple of times, and the novelty has worn off, but its complete sickness is just so engrossing for some reason. It just immerses itself in disease and putrid hatred. Like Megan is Missing it's just one of those really effective movies at hammering in the fear. Though Megan is Missing I'd say is probably the worst of humanity captured on film, Haute Tension is a more 'traditional' horror story just done up with one motherfucker of a whallop in the first third - I mean holy shit.

Haute Tension I also think is one of those movies where the violence supplements the story. It's a movie that puts emphasis on suspense that just happens to be really gory, especially when it comes to things like the car driver getting sliced to pieces with a saw. The gore doesn't overtake the story and become the main reason for watching like a lot of films that have been released since its release.

Also, going back once again to Megan is Missing, I honestly feel that that movie is a damn great example of how to do a found footage movie properly. It's presented as actual footage that you could conceivably believe is real (aside from a few points like some of the first half and the newscast scenes), it places emphasis on both suspense and freaking the viewer the fuck out without resorting to endless jump scares (in fact, there's only one jump scare in the entire movie, and it works incredibly well because you don't expect it at all), and, unlike many other found footage movies that do this for some idiotic reason, there's no score. One thing that drives me up the wall with some found footage films is that they put a film score in there, completely negating the purpose of being a found footage movie. The Last Exorcism did this, and even though I quite liked the movie, the fact that its got backing in music in places really takes me out of the movie's element. That and the fact that the ending has traditional movie style editing that also negates its found footage style. At least justify it by having more than one camera in the scene like in the big fight at the end of Chronicle where they levitate three dozen cameras into the sky with them during their fight that's edited like a traditional superhero movie fight.

I think the stark and effective imagery and pretty much kick ass ending negated those small flaws in Martyrs. Though I didn't notice many of these plot-holes Empyreal speaks of. For all it's outlandishness, the story was pretty straightforward. Though I do think the skinned girl would have died pretty fucking fast.

That's something I've noticed in some movies also, that characters who have their skin removed last an unnatural amount of time alive before dying. X is for XXL from The ABCs of Death I think is the worst offender here as the main character in that segment literally saws off every single inch of skin on her body exposing muscle and organs, and not only do none of her guts fall out of her, but she stays alive for a good 2 minutes after completely removing her skin before dying.

Haute Tension has one of the worst endings ever. A completely unnecessary twist ending that not even Shyamalan would sink to. Nothing like a twist ending that makes absolutely no sense, that upon reflection lays huge gaping holes throughout the movie.

Yeah, as I mentioned with Martyrs, I hate the "it was all in their head" endings, unless it's really, really cleverly done. Fight Club bothered me for the same reason; the twist seemed so forced, and totally unnecessary. The movie would have been a lot better if it had just been about two guys. At this point that kind of ending is super fucking cliche to the point of being really irritating; didn't Blair Witch 2 also pull that crap?

Haven't seen it in like 5 years, but...

It did, but it wasn't anywhere near as good a movie as Fight Club was.

Oh really?

As much as one may not like Fight Club, it was FAR more competently put together than Blair Witch 2.

Tell me more.

Nonsense. There's a reason Blair Witch 2 consistently makes Top 5 horror movie lists of all time.

Yup, I enjoyed it as well. I posted about it here quite sometime back but I couldn't be arsed to search for it It's your atypical rom-com done right and very engaging. As you rightly mentioned, tightly paced. Not to be just wooed by her prettiness, I thought JLaw was brilliant. My only introduction to her were mainly the X-men and Hunger Games movies and some of the other small cameo roles she played. But, in my opinion, for her to take it the next level and play a more mature cathartic volatile woman was quite admirable. Her performance felt so real, is all I'm saying.
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I saw Django last night, and it was quite a surprise how much of a comedy it was. Don't get me wrong, it was about the most entertaining thing ever, but Tarantino seemed to really push up the silliness and jokes, it really is a comedy before anything else. His films are usually so slick and stylized that I usually watch them with a big grin on my face, but this time it's less "That was cool/crazy" and more "that was hilarious", scenes like the KKK meeting are there purely for laughs, and it's a new experience for him. This did leave the contrasting scenes of really brutal, uncomfortable violence (the dogs, the mandingo fight, as oppossed to the entertaining bloodbaths that are the shootouts) seeming really out of place. He has had these sort of scenes before, think the baseball bat scene (admittedly, some people found it funny, I found it quite brutal), or giving the nazi a sympathetic backstory and young family and lively disposition before mercilessly executing him in Inglorious Basterds, but at least there you had the knowledge that they were goddamned nazis, and the film was entertaining in a clever, stylish manner, whereas these are innocent people dying painfully and slowly, and the film throws these brutal scenes in between townsfolk running away from seeing a black guy on a horse and Samuel L Jackson going off hilariously about letting Django in the house.

With that said, it is funny as hell, and the violence is as over the top as possible, it's definitely childish with penises exploding, Quintin's own demise, guys getting caught in the middle of the crossfire and just getting blasted into mountains of soupy goo, but it's a fun ride. If anything it's probably his least well put together film, there isn't much suspense here, with only one real intense scene where Candy knows Schultz and Django are liars and keeps it to himself as he messes with them before an explosion of rage, similar to Christoph's role in IB, well acted by Leo as usual, but it isn't half as intense. Many of the issues that befall the protagonists are solved in a comedic manner, such as the Australians, or every time Schultz gets angry mobs off his back after killing a bounty, which makes the whole film a lot lighter and less genuinely brilliant, settling in for merely entertaining as hell.

At any rate, it's a very fun movie, worth the entrance price of Samuel L Jackson's old slave hating slave with crazy eyes alone, and there really isn't anything else like it around. I'd also watch a TV show spin off of Christoph Waltz just riding around, collecting bounties, he's a ridiculously watchable actor.

I loved Django to death. It was the movie that finally topped Kill Bill as my favorite Tarantino movie, and not even Basterds was able to do that.

THIS.

Anyway, the past two odd pages have been filled with horror/gore/torture movies, a genre of film, that I most certainly avoid because I quite frankly can't stomach such things. But on the other hand, I enjoy monster-centric horror movies. I admittedly haven't watched too many though. I enjoyed the Fly when I saw many years ago. Also, the obvious and obligatory Godzilla, Jaws, Thing mentions.

So what are the some of the best ones out there?

The Host is a great monster movie from South Korea. The CGI of the monster itself is kinda dated due to movie coming out in 2006, but that's no big deal when the rest of the movie is as good as it is.

Also, even though there are a lot of people that don't like it, I say give Cloverfield a shot. I enjoyed it a lot, and you might too.

I've seen Cloverfield. I thought the whole PoV camera was kinda gimmicky in the beginning but then I got used to it in the theater. Yeah, a decent movie. I'll give the Host a watch.

Original Dawn of the Dead.

The scene where the bikers take the mall. Fuck yeah.

Monster movies?

Have you seen the classics, man? The Karloff, Price era? Some of my favorites ever.

Speaking of Vincent Price, the two go-to movies involving him are The Pit and the Pendulum and The Masque of the Red Death. The former I first saw in my 7th grade English class when we were doing stuff relating to Poe, and the latter I discovered through the samples of it used on "And When He Falleth" from Velvet Darkness They Fear. Two classic movies and among the best of Roger Corman's body of work.

The Masque of the Red Death is simply classic.

Frog, I haven't :/ Not in this particular genre. But all for the better coz I get a chance to do so now (Y) Thanks for some of the recommendations, guys.

I remember enjoying Dog Soldiers quite a bit when it came out. It's made by Neil Marshall who also made the The Descent. I felt the werewolves were really done well and there wasn't any CG from what I recall. The characters are tough as shit so it doesn't fall into that 'woe is me, victim' predictability trap.

Cloverfield is one of my favourite found footage movies, admittedly there are very few that are actually good. There were many long continuous shots throughout that made it seem quite real and it's hard to predict what will happen to the characters or where they will go. There is hardly any waiting around or long shots of nothing happening which is a welcome relief, of course there are some scenes with characters arguing/complaining that verge on annoying but it's was all very a-grade and nothing ever verges on being painful to watch. The movie's flow is similar to the original REC in my opinion.

Jeepers Creepers is another modern monster movie that I'd recommend. It starts off as a Duel type thriller and progresses into a cat and mouse horror. It's very self-aware and pokes fun at it's self like the crop of movies that came out in 00's so there is a sense of realism and relatability, except the killer is truly memorable and iconic.

I'd also quickly suggest Feast if you like silly horror/comedies, it's similar to From Dusk Till Dawn and Tremors.

I don't like Cloverfield at all, but Feast looks sweet. The plot is almost exactly the same as Dusk Till Dawn and I love that flick.

It actually started as a Project Greenlight film, in the third season of the show they selected Feast. It's worth a watch.

Movie of the now: Murder Collection V.1. It's yet another found footage style movie (I seem to be on a kick with those at the moment) that takes on an anthology format showing various "real" murders. Wikipedia says it takes inspiration from the old mockumentaries of the 70s and 80s like Mondo cane and Faces of Death (it even has a Dr. Gross style character appearing in bumpers for the footage). It looks to be infinitely more serious than The ABCs of Death was, so let's see what it's all about.

EDIT: Just finished it. Murder Collection V.1 was, for the most part, pretty boring. A couple of the segments were so short they didn't really need to be in there, and a couple were very overly long and either monotonous or insufferably annoying. A few segments work really well, and at the very least all the footage looks incredibly real. Not something I'm probably ever gonna watch again though.

Thought Feast was crap, just kinda disposable and unfunny, but Cloverfield I thought was quite good, a few lame characters and dialogue aside...it had a cool setting and a nice, fast pace. Good flick.

I'm definitely with Emp on Feast; complete waste of time with literally no redeeming value. It frequently confused subverting action/horror movie cliches by doing the opposite of what's expected (e.g. a main character giving a rallying St. Crispin's Day speech who is then instantly eaten mid-sentence) with actual ingenuity. It's basically the equivalent of a high school English student who thinks he's really clever by ending his poem with the line: "this is the way the world ends: Not with a whimper but with a bang." Worst of all, that aforementioned example was actually shamelessly nabbed from Deep Blue Sea; do you have any idea how bad a movie must be if it resorts to stealing from a Renny Harlin picture? John Gulager is also a sycophantic control freak and all-around pretentious piece of shit, as anyone who has watched the third season of Project Greenlight will attest. His most recent film, the $20 million dollar "Piranha 3DD" was probably the worst theater-released horror film of 2012; glad that it was a box office disaster; hope he never works again.

Just finished The Poughkeepsie Tapes.

Holy. Shit.

I have no words to describe how I feel about it. It's that powerful and disturbing and heartbreaking a movie.

So I'm guessing you enjoyed it slightly more than Devil?

I found the acting pretty campy in places (an expected but still irritating by-product of the insanely low-budget) and the "The killer could be in the movie theater you're in RIGHT MEOW" line at the end translated atrociously to the small screen, but otherwise I found it compelling and thought-provoking and incredibly well-produced. You can tell an awful lot of work went into researching and observing serial killers; can't say I'm particularly jealous of the filmmakers.

It's one of those movies that becomes all that more intriguing when you let yourself believe that it's real.

ugh I just watched Megan is Missing and it's one of the worst horror movies I've ever seen. Compared to other "found footage" movies, this is by far the most unrealistic, predictable, and boring one, which is saying a lot. I can appreciate slow pacing, but this was just slow for the sake of being slow, similar to House of the Dead.

I just watched Searching for Sugar Man. Really crazy story, about a Mexican folk singer from Detroit who released two albums in America, which flopped. However, in South Africa they were a big hit and he became very famous there without his knowledge. His last album was released in 1971 and after that he just worked in construction. This film documents South Africans trying to track him down. They finally do and he plays a few sold out gigs in South Africa but continues to live a humble life in Detroit. Definitely an incredible story. I don't like how they leave out the fact that his records sold well in Australia, but I suppose the filmmakers thought that it would weaken the mystery or whatever. The dude is actually really good:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyE9vFGKogs

I'm guessing you mean House of the Devil, which has already been discussed to death in this thread. I didn't care much for either film, but Megan is Missing was the clear loser in my eyes. That said, I can't stand the entire genre of "Found Footage" films anyway (unless they're interwoven into the film ala Poughkeepsie Tapes), so I'm already pretty biased.