Dunkirk was great. Beautifully shot and the story is straight to the point. There are no main characters. It's just a situation. By far the best approach to making a film about wartime accomplishments. Watch Jeremy Jahns youtube review for someone completely MISSING THE POINT in that regard and he complains there's no character backstories to make you care about anyone. That's the best part. It makes it more of a cinematic documentary than having to suffer garbage (non military) story lines that have brought down so many war movies. Every gunshot makes you jump in your seat too, it's a very loud and jarring movie. I am by no means a Nolan fan but I hope this gives future war movie directors the guts to just tell the story of battle without all the nonsense of characters missing their sweethearts at home.

Thor and Doctor Strange were more or less equally bad to me, both had a good idea thrown around here and there but were as a whole incoherent and forgettable. The Marvel movies are just really hit or miss I'd say. The Captain America movies have all been solid, but every other hero has had at least one boring movie. I'm hoping the new Spider-Man will be good, I haven't seen it yet but I'm somewhat optimistic considering it has Michael Keaton and does not have Andrew Garfield. Spider-Man was always one of my favorites in the comics, so if we get more good Spider-Man I will be very pleased. (I have no hope, unfortunately, of my favorite comic book seeing a decent movie any time in the near future...since my favorite comic book is/was Fantastic Four).

Spider-Man was good, but not amazing or anything. Just a well-done small superhero movie with a likable lead, which was a nice change of pace for the series. Doctor Strange I did think was very average and not really exciting at all, though the Dark Dimension stuff toward the end did look super pretty.

Dunkirk and Saving Private Ryan are very, very different movies - like I said before, Nolan very wisely excised almost every speck of Spielbergisms from his film-making for this one, which thankfully puts it in a whole different realm from Saving Private Ryan. I actually do like Saving Private Ryan a whole lot, too, but there's absolutely no need for a movie that just repeats what made that one great. Dunkirk does not, at all. Just utterly terrifying stuff, very light on anything I'd call "action," which made the violence that happens in it that much more impactful.

I also watched the Babadook fairly recently. I agree completely with your take on it, I think atmosphere and giving the viewer freedom to their own interpretation really helps a horror movie. But you know what doesn't?



Still a good movie though. Really interesting premise and genuinely freaky, especially when she was watching all that crazy shit on the TV.

still up in my splatter binge but now I'm throwing in more monsters

thanks all for your input on dunkirk. it still sounds like a wtf movie. I like Nolan's otherworldliness more than anything else, so can't see the appeal of him making a "realistic" movie... like Michael Bay filming an indie rom com on an iphone, or AC/DC hiring Diamanda Galas and doing a psych jazz album. maybe on dvd.

One million percent agreed about those stupid fucking roars. I liked the movie, but that crap seriously marred what would otherwise have been pretty terrifying scenes. It's like hearing the Wilhelm Scream in a scene that's supposed to be serious.

I just watched the Eyes of My Mother and it was cool but underwhelming with regard to what I heard people saying. Reminded me a lot of Calvaire with the minimalism/sparseness and general creepiness.

I finally saw the trailer for Disaster Artist. Guaranteed to be the best movie of the year. Holy shit, that was great.

That definitely looked great, though I have to say not even James Franco can imitate Wiseau's perpetually-disoriented gaze.

He's so close, though, it's amazing. Immediately after the trailer on YouTube, there was a "best of the Room" video that started playing. Franco nailed that scene from the trailer.


"I did not hit her, I did not do it, it's bullshit, oh hai Mark."

Franco does a great Wiseau impression. Particularly amazing, considering how difficult it is for a mere human to convey Wiseau's vacant, alien bleating.

It's obviously gonna be good when a movie starts out by saying "this film should be played loud"



How can I resist the no wave slasher

I saw War For the Planet of the Apes today. Another winner for the reboot. I liked Rise and I really liked Dawn, and this one continues the strong reimagining of the series. Plenty of emotion but very well-written.

Saw new movie yesterday called 12 Feet Deep: Trapped Sisters.

Very first person shown was Tobin Bell so I was immediately interested in seeing more. Sadly, he is just in a cameo appearance, the first five minutes of film. As for the rest of the movie, it is a bit uneven. The concept was good and realistically creepy but it forces external problems to carry the film. One external problem was realistic and the fact that another character would be unaware of the cause behind this problem made sense but just like the other external problem, it felt added just to pad out the running time.

Some of the acting was a bit much for the actresses to portray and I felt the script did not help them out as a couple of moments for realization and impending doom seem to happen movie style instead of organically.

Overall it was a decent little film with only five characters, two of which are cameos, and worth seeing at least once. Anyone else seen it? I'd give it a 3 out of 5

I was impressed by how well Franco did, and especially impressed when I saw the same clip from the movie again. He's on point.



A local theater frequently does midnight showings of The Room on Fridays and Rocky Horror on Saturdays. I think they do this set-up once a month or every other month.

Going to try to see The Room in the theater tonight, to get the full experience ha ha. Depends how the girlfriend feels as we get closer to showtime. Hopefully awake and ready to rock.

New IT trailer:


Looks like it might actually be pretty good. Definitely more faithful to the book than the TV miniseries.

No budget wtfness, horrendous acting and dialogue, 80s infomercial soundtrack, gore-ific nonsense

Free Fire - A few people here talked about this back in April - May and nobody seemed to like it. I didn't either. Most of the movie consists of criminals in a warehouse shooting at each other after a deal goes bad, and maybe that could have been fun if the action had been well executed. Here, unfortunately, it's mostly people finding cover, crawling around, and occasionally poking their heads up to fire a few shots. Not very exciting.

There were some slightly amusing character moments, but I never found myself rooting for or against anyone in particular. So yeah, the movie didn't work as action, or as drama, and was only sporadically effective at comedy. No idea why Martin Scorsese was one of nine executive producers on this.

You still doing your slasher marathon? If you haven't already, be sure to watch "Silent Night, Deadly Night 2," as it might be one of the funniest movies ever made, thanks to Eric Freeman's brilliant eyebrow acting.

Haven't seen it. Is that a sequel/does it matter if I watch it out of order?

And Things is pretty much some of the worst stuff I've ever seen and I love it.

It is a sequel, but it contains a lot of reused footage from the first movie so you should be fine to watch it as a standalone.

Yes. Agreed 1000%, I had so much fun with Silent Night, Deadly Night 2. Some of the most emotive eyebrows in the history of cinema. Also supposedly filmed in ten days, according to IMDB.

Has anyone got some good super gory slasher movies to rec? I've had more than enough of supernatural/sci-fi/zombie/cosmic horror stuff (although I wouldn't mind a few of their elements in it) and have only watched the original TCM out of the not-so-gory slasher lot so feel free to recommend some obvious classics. I would have otherwise looked at Amber Gray's list but I'm not sure how slasher they all are, of the ones I don't know.

My first appearance on this thread and actually the first time I sought something like it out here, so please don't flatten me when I say I haven't gone through all the posts.

Just a quick comment on nuthin' in particular -

People unfamiliar with comics and their heroes/villains and are just now experiencing these characters as they appear on the big screen who know I've been a comic collector (at first I just wanted whatever individual comics had the most fighting in 'em, but then as I figured shit out...) since as long as I can remember have asked me where "this dude Thanos" ranks on the 'ol super baddie scale. Of course unless I can use examples they know I'm speaking gibberish to them, but I'll usually ask them who they think tops the scale and go from there. I usually go with the fleeting glimpse of Galactus the storm cloud in the FF flick as his closet rival in power they'd know since I can't really mention Cosmic Cubes and such.

Now my real motive -

But the real point of this longwinded entrance is I was wondering who's read Warlock and the Infinity Watch #25, where the Watch, Silver Surfer, Dr. Strange and Thanos take an incapacitated battle-maddened Thor to Asgard for help, but instead wind up going at it with the Asgardians and Thanos gives Odin a poke. Perhaps one of the greatest mostly one-one-one battles of Marvel Comics IMHO.

Anyone else wanna bask in its glory or point me to some other battles I may have overlooked over the years (I haven't actively collected in quite some time now, annoyed with multiple covers and bagged editions and yet another foil cover and 27 title crossovers, so I'm sure lots have slipped past me)?

War for the Planet of the Ape's score REALLY heaped on the melodrama for almost the entire runtime. The try-too-hard nature of it made a decent if very overlong movie comical.

Definitely definitely Blood Rage http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085253/

Blood Diner http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092669/

Chopping Mall http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090837/

Nightmare http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082818/

Ichi the Killer http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0296042/

Deathgasm is a good slasher/metal movie. It's about a band whose riffs turn local residents into zombies and summon demons. It's cheesy, but it was decent.

I'm seeing some negative comments on this movie, and what you described is definitely a reason for it, but I actually liked it. I liked the series because it focused on the plight of the apes, and gave them the lion's share of screen time. Sure, it was melodramatic - more so than Dawn ever was - but I really liked it.

I just bought this Japanese horror movie called Kuroneko. It's a ghost story about vengeful spirits, and it has a 94% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, so it should be good. Too, it's on the Criterion Collection, who usually have good stuff.

Saw Dunkirk today. And what a gripping, moving, tense, immersive and crushing experience it was. Absolutely splendid.

Welcome to my list of favorite movies

FUCK. YES.

I absolutely loved every second of the film, even if it was kind of a mess and didn't really make a ton of sense when you think about it.

Saw Atomic Blonde.

It was alright. The fight scenes had a slightly less contrived feel to them than the dance numbers seen in a lot of films (and fully on display in two of the movies promoted before it), but they still had a bunch of that choreography in them. Still, people actually looked like they got hurt during the fighting. Too many films seem to follow the same logic as fighting games--you can get beat nearly to death, but continue standing up while spin-kicking your way through the air. Charlize Theron is always a draw for me, but the film, billed as kind of a spy thriller, spent more time on action scenes than spy thriller scenes. Ending seemed a bit drawn-out.

A Serious Man - Solid Coen Bros flick. I liked it better than a lot of their other recent ones. It was odd and a bit arty and the humor gave way to a more poignant storyline than I expected - had some things to say about one's lot and outlook on life and about attitudes toward religion. This was a swirling cauldron of tense build-ups and colliding oddball situations that went to a kind of unexpected climax, and the way the main character was written was good - he's likable in a lovable loser way but still obviously flawed, and the film works with that to create its conflicts. Good stuff.

The Green Inferno - I really was just exhausted after watching this - a real tired slog. This had some kind of rep as being so much nastier and more violent than anything else, a la Cannibal Holocaust and other old school exploitation type flicks. But really it was pretty bog standard, with everything happening in a cliche way like any other tired, unimaginative modern horror film. Eli Roth's story and characters are grating and obnoxious too as he tries to have a social commentary about "slacktivism" and fails hard. I didn't enjoy anything about this shit and I am glad I'm done with it.

Check out the Cinema Freaks review though!

^A Serious Man is one of the Coen Brothers' more underrated movies (though IMO Barton Fink and The Hudsucker Proxy win for most underrated). There's a lot more symbolism under the surface too. I agree: it's definitely much better than some of their other more recent ones.

Have you seen the trailer for Suburbicon? It was originally going to be directed by the Coen Brothers but now I guess George Cloony directed it. Looks pretty good and very Coen-esque.

Yeah I enjoy some of their recent ones like Hail Caesar and whatnot, but A Serious Man had a bit more meat to it I felt.

Suburbicon does look good. I'd check it out.

Thanks! Chopping Mall looks absolutely fucking bonkers... and I really want to watch it.

Chopping Mall is really not all that gory or slashery, what with the killing being done by "totally sweet" 80's robots. It is entertaining in it's own right, but not really gore/slasher.

A recent one I found is Death Spa, which is bonkers all over the place, slashery, and gory... and ridiculous... and fun.

Ichi is certainly entertaining, but it has low-budget CG gore, which I think does a disservice to the genre. Gore should be visceral and physical, not digital.