Rate the last film you watched out of 5

[Fierce Poodle]

Hellraiser (1987)

 

I was under the impression that this was considered a horror classic? Anyway I hadn’t watched it since my teenage years so thought I’d give it a rewatch. Sadly, I found it to be pretty boring for the most part and about as scary as an episode of the Sooty show. The lead actors are complete charisma vacuums and the ending is ruined by some shitting awful special effects which have not aged well. 
 

2/5

[lolly]

Robot Holocaust (1987)

A highly unlikely band of heroes traverses a post-apocalyptic wasteland to rescue a scientist from the tyrannical Dark One and his army of robots.

 

This has featured on Mystery Science Theatre apparently , not that I watch it but I hear  it’s decent.

 

Some of the stuff I’ve watched recently has been incredibly cheap but this one takes the absolute biscuit , or would if they could afford them.  The costumes, locations  and props are all super cheap  and the big bad’s lair  is quite obviously a cartoon picture inserted into the shot.  The acting is  actually the worst thing I’ve seen so far , some of the delivery  is absolutely laughable; mistimed, over enunciated and with all the emotion of  the rubber suited dudes  that are supposedly robots.   By that measure though  some of the actors appear to be  taking it super seriously and give the impression they’re creating high art which is amusing in it’s own right.

 

There’s also a fair bit of amusement to be had with where they’ve filmed this, it’s supposedly a post apocalyptic wasteland but the New York skyline can be seen in multiple shots  looking  absolutely fine, you can tell some of it’s shot  on a wasteland near the city  as well as Central Park , which looks well dodgy and it looks like the cast may have been in more peril on set than alluded to be the story.

 

 It also  seems to suffer from the “fuck we’re out of money and /or I didn’t write and ending, shoot something quick and cheap”  kind of ending that crops up in a few of these sorts of movies.

 

Anyway, it’s fairly predictably shit  and  a lot of scenes bear little or no resemblance to the one just preceding  them  but it chugs along with no little enthusiasm so on that basis it’s recommended if your tolerance is high.

3/5

[Waggo]

The Phantom Of The Open - 3/5

 

Think Full Monty but with golf instead of male strippers. 

 

A late 40's soon to be redundant chain smoking dock worker from Barrow decides to take up golf & enters the British Open despite having never played a full round of golf in his life.  The film is elevated by the fact it is a true story, and the clips at the end with the real guy are every bit as entertaining and unbelievable as the scenes depicted in the film itself.

[Vimster]

Plane (2023)

Perfectly acceptable B-movie action that doesn't deviate from its aim to deliver a simple and at times tense film with solid action sequences and a couple of bone-crunching fights. Expect anything more and you're in the wrong place. Yes there's the usual idiocy you get in this sort of thing, and once the plane gets onto the island it feels like a bit more could have been made of some of the characters, plus the baddies were very one-dimensional.

 

3.5/5

[Masterbeef]

Trying to find 3 90s movies I haven’t already seen wasn’t easy but I got there.

 

Drop Dead Gorgeous 

 

A bit to on the nose with a noticeable lack of subtlety. Great fun though, especially Dunst who is note perfect. Definitely worth a watch if you haven’t seen it, just don’t expect any surprises. 
 

3/5

 

Break Up

 

Unheard of thriller with Jack Bauer and Bridget Fonda. Nothing new or original here and Fonda is the wrong choice for the role.  Luckily, it doesn’t outstay its welcome and the supporting cast is mostly excellent.

 

2.5/5

 

Blue Juice 

 

What the actual f*ck did I just watch. Narrative coherence takes a back seat to a terrible script and preposterous performances. I’m sure there is a good film to be made about th3 Cornwall surfing scene, but this is most definitely not that movie. Even talented actors like Zeta Jones, McGregor and Allen can’t save the day here. 
 

2/5 just for how utterly bonkers the whole thing is. 
 

Also,

 

Anatomy of A Murder

 

I could’ve sworn I hadn’t seen this before. I was wrong though. I’m actually going to rewatch the last 15 minutes in the next day or so as I was very tired when watching it (it’s very long!) and missed things. Great movie making from everyone concerned with light touch direction that fits the story exceedingly well. 
 

4/5

 

The Mist (Black and white version)

 

I fell asleep watching this. Fantastic opening 40 minutes and closing 20 minutes but I thought it rather dragged in the middle section. This might have been down to the lack of colour which the supermarket scenes really needed. I thought the cast was, on the whole, excellent. 
 

3.5/5

[Tequlia]

Dune (2021) 5/5

 

Somehow hadn't seen it until now.  Nothing to say that hasn't already been said, other than it was the soundtrack that impressed me the most; I thought it was absolutely outstanding throughout.

[SeanR]

Wankanda Forver 2/5

Night at the museum 2 2/5

steel magnolias 1/5

cast away 4/5

 

[Tequlia]

13 hours ago, ZOK said:

Rojo - 5/5 (MUBI)

 

This is fantastic, an Argentinian flick set in 1975 in the days where the junta is fast approaching and society is slowly losing its mind to the terror. A slightly crooked middle class lawyer is pushed by chance into doing a Very Bad Thing, and sees his composure unravel when a detective comes to call.

 

This is splendid filmmaking - the shots are delicious, the acting throughout perfectly nuanced and the soundtrack is wonderful, all contributing to the tension as people and the social rules that bind them disappear. One of the best opening credits sequences I think I’ve ever seen.

 

Good shout. nearly missed that.  Have you seen Azor?  Would recommend 👍

[ZOK]

Yes, I loved it!

[Gabe]

The Eternals (2021)

 

I watched this again and, shock, enjoyed it again.

 

I know most people rank it quite lowly within the MCU and at or very near the bottom of Phase 4, whereas for me this is far more interesting than anything else Phase 4 has put out. I am generally out of step with the forum on this, as I've found Phase 4 to be largely awful (yes, including Spider-Man) and only really enjoyed the least-popular TV show (Falcon & The Winter Soldier, though She-Hulk was decent too).

 

Anyway, with that confession of my sins out of the way, to the film itself.

 

Yes, Madden is largely awful and his scenes with Chan are more wooden than the Amazon. Sure, half the cast suffer from a lack of screen time and development. Yep, it is different from the usual MCU template and I think that threw a lot of people, especially with the longer runtime. None of this is in dispute.

 

But - and hear me out on this - I think there is some real heart in the film if you view it through the prism of the interpersonal relationships. Gilgamesh & Thena, Druig & Makkari and Kingo & Sprite all have some really nice character moments; indeed, I think Kingo is the MVP of the film, providing some comedic elements but also doing some of the emotional lifting (I really like his speech in the ship before the final encounter).

 

I think the story is actually good, too. There's some people punching each other, yeah, but it's almost incidental to a degree and there's an interesting tale being told, because there's no real big bad here, it's more than that, and the themes of life, death and rebirth are more interesting than villain of the week. Arguably it's harder to see how this fits in with the wider MCU because of that, but I guess that's in part why I think it worked - it wasn't held back by having to try and fit however many hundred different Easter eggs and plot strands had been laid down by the other films and TV shows. I guess it also helped that I have no idea about any of these characters and have never read a comic, so I didn't have any baggage of the characters not being faithful to the source material.

 

So yeah, I think I liked this better on second-viewing - and I think it's a shame we won't see any follow-up to it.

 

4/5

[Vimster]

Double Target (1987)

You will not see this many bamboo huts explode in any other film, honestly. As Rambo knock-offs go this is actually pretty entertaining, packed with haphazard action, Russians turning up at any given moment to be blown away, and some great helicopter-based fighting. Bo Svenson is hopelessly miscast as the Russian antagonist though, and I really wanted a Missing In Action-style ending where dodgy senator Donald Pleasence gets shown up, but hey at least we get a shedload of grenade launcher action to compensate.

 

3.5/5

[monkeydog]

Underwater

 

Underwhelming!

 

Nothing is scary or exciting.

 

Kirsten Steward is great (not just because of the Annie Lennox haircut and spending 50% of the film in her underwear). The suits are also great!  

 

Every attempt at a watery action sequence is crap compared to the Abyss.

 

Totally fails deliver on the 

 

Spoiler

Cosmic horror element.  

 

The exterior sequences are relentlessly cloudy and dull to look at.

 

2/5

[Laters]

The Burning 5/5

 

Korean film based on a Murakami short story.

Yet another excellent Korean film that demands a second viewing.

Worth watching, then reading about, then watching again.

 

 

[Uncle Nasty]

Barbarian 0/5 - Total waste of time, pointless garbage.

 

Triangle Of Sadness 4/5 - Funny, original, unexpected.

 

The Menu 1/5 - A moderately interesting concept clumsily handled.

 

Jackass Forever 2/5 - Ehren McGhehey saved this from being a 0/5.

[Vimster]

Never Too Young To Rock (1976)

Watched this as it was heavily featured in episode 69 of the Chart Music podcast, where music writer Taylor Parkes was a lot more eloquent about this than I could ever be. This film is brilliantly awful, borderline unwatchable in places, you can almost smell the 70s-ness of it. In essence you have Freddie Jones driving a Group Detector Van around some of the most drab locations they could find looking for bands to appear on the telly otherwise they'll stop showing pop forever! The producers were probably going for madcap faintly surreal pop mayhem but a lack of budget and what feels like a rushed production just yields unsatisfying chaos. It really looks like they filmed whatever was on their mind and blindly edited it together into something just about cohesive. By 1976 the selection of bands featured, including The Rubettes, Mud and The Glitter Band, were well past their hit-making prime. More an interesting pop artefact than nostalgic entertainment. Big thanks to ReadyMix Concrete Ltd.

 

2.5/5

[ScouserInExile]

The Menu (Disney)

 

I didn't like it, but I didn't not like it. It was just odd, but not in a good way. 

 

2/5 

[strider]

The Whale

I thought this was superb and was in tears by the end. I loved Farrell in Banshees, but Fraser deserves the Oscar for me.

4/5

 

Knock At The Cabin

Some superb shots and a great atmosphere but it's pretty pedestrian. Dave Batisita was excellent, mind.

3/5

[Jamie John]

Film #5/52: Ad Astra (2019) - Blu-Ray

 

 

With the exception of a few of the set-pieces, I mostly thought this was quite ponderous and meandering, and ultimately just a wee bit dull. It looks nice, but it wears its influences (2001, Apocalypse Now, Solaris, Gravity, lots of others) too proudly on its sleeve and ends up feeling derivative as a result. It's also very on the nose, mostly because of Pitt's irritating voice-over, which is seemingly only there to tell us things it's perfectly easy to infer for ourselves. Pitt's characterisation, generally, is fundamentally flawed: he's the best astronaut in the world because he's able to remain uncannily calm in stressful situations, but, dramatically, this just makes him boring, and when so much of the film is spent in close-up on his face as he goes through 'feelings', it's not exactly edge-of-your-seat stuff. The ending was a big let down, too. A real damp squib.

 

And what the fuck was that bit with the 

Spoiler

face-eating monkeys

 

about?! That certainly came out of left-field. It was probably the only part of the film that made me properly pay attention, but only because it was entirely bewildering and entirely out of step with anything else. I just burst out laughing when I was watching it.

 

Normally I'm a complete sucker for this breed of moody, psychological sci-fi, but there's a lot better out there than this.

 

2.5/5

[Festoon]

The Whale

Appaling. Aaronofsky is responsible for that final shot, which should indicate a spell in director jail. One star for Frasier doing his best in this dreck. 

 

1/5

[Monkeyboy]

On 03/02/2023 at 13:30, Vimster said:

Would definitely agree Amazon Prime is a good source of trash. I've watched tons. You have to drill down a bit through, find a good in and you could hit a seam. Some are poor quality transfers though. Tried to watch Violent City aka The Family, Charles Bronson and Telly Savalas Italian crime thriller from 1970, but it was a total mess with no subs for the Italian bits. 

 

I think I had the subs on for the whole of that movie. Or maybe I ended up having to get a high seas version of it, I can't remember now. The audio in general is fucked up in that one though, right? One minute Bronson is talking English, the next minute he's talking Italian in a different voice. There's a couple of other chunks of the movie where everyone starts talking Italian before switching back to English.

[Treble]

34 minutes ago, Festoon said:

The Whale

Appaling. Aaronofsky is responsible for that final shot, which should indicate a spell in director jail. One star for Frasier doing his best in this dreck. 

 

1/5

 

I similarly found it to be complete mush. I'd rate it slightly higher simply because the performances are far more nuanced and impressive than the material deserves but yeah, not good. 

 

The problem is that every 'flaw' the character has is mitigated by their actions, making them all impossibly perfect:

 

Spoiler

Charlie's love for Alan was wonderful and pure. He left his wife and she started to drink... BUT she has raised their daughter, who is a drop-out... BUT Ellie turns out to be really intelligent and kind. Liz is enabling Charlie's self-destruction... BUT gives him full nursing care for free, doctor-level insight AND sets Ellie & Thomas straight. Thomas is a thief, an addict and a cultist... BUT he's just misguided and really, actually the one carrying God's true message! 

 

Worst of all is that it's some crypto-Christian bullshit about how everyone is lovely and has just strayed from the path a little and needs to work their way back to the light. 

 

Sentimental Oscar-bait, with some amazing performances acting as a floatation device. 

 

2/5

[pastry]

Where the Crawdads Sing - 1/5

 

i quite enjoyed the texture of the novel, but this film adaptation is dreadful. Has just about the worst pacing you’ll ever see - it tries to rush through every scene, but still drags. It’s poorly structured so has to jump around far too much. It has all the key plot points of the book, presented in such a lazy fashion it robs the revelatory & character building moments of their gravity and emotion. There’s only the merest sense of struggle or rejection that is the core of the main characters experience.
 

My Mum would love it. 

 

Aliens - 5/5 

 

Not sure if anyone has seen this but it’s utterly brilliant. A masterwork of character building and tension. I’ve seen it a thousand times but it had been a while - fresh eyes and being that much older and exposed to more only reveals how perfect this is. 

 

 

[Couch Corpse]

Moonstruck - 2/7

[El Geet]

It would be great if y’all could put where/how to watch the film you’re reviewing…Netflix, Prime, MUBI etc. I’ll often follow recommendations so comes in handy. Thanks!

[Nathan Wind]

Judas and the Black Messiah - Prime

 

An eye opening film charting the run up to the US government sanctioned murder of Fred Hampton, the leader of the Illinois chapter of The Black Panthers. A subject I don’t know anywhere near enough about. Fantastic performances all around, and a gripping true life tale. Amazing soundtrack too.

 

4/5

 

Trees Lounge - Prime Freevee

 

A meandering, relaxed character piece about a New York deadbeat played brilliantly by Steve Buscemi, and his barfly acquaintances. A perpetual loser that makes poor decision after poor decision, who’s played so sympathetically you can’t help but feel for him. One of those films that doesn’t really say anything or go anywhere but is thoroughly enjoyable all the same. A character study about normal, flawed, working class people centred around the titular Trees Lounge bar.

Very good indeed. And lean, at a gnats bollock over 90 minutes.

 

4/5 again

 

Prime is doing solid work.

 

 

 

 

 

[Fierce Poodle]

34 minutes ago, El Geet said:

It would be great if y’all could put where/how to watch the film you’re reviewing…Netflix, Prime, MUBI etc. I’ll often follow recommendations so comes in handy. Thanks!

I use the JustWatch app.

[gospvg]

Puss in Boots (Something somthing wish) - 3/5

 

My first trip back to the cinema since the pandemic, kids birthday treat.

Film was ok, I enjoyed the teaser at the end of where Puss In Boots is going to next (Spoiler below).

 

Spoiler

Far Far Away

 

[Fierce Poodle]

Knock At The Cabin 

 

Good stuff from M Night, his best for a while.

 

3.5/5

 

The Sixth Sense 

 

After watching his new film, my daughter wanted to watch some of his old stuff. This still holds up really well as a gripping and spooky tale. I’d forgotten how good Toni Collette is in it too - the scene with her and Haley “I see dead people” Osment in the car towards the end is incredibly moving.

 

4.5/5

[schmojo]

A bit of a found footage binge.

 

The Poughkeepsie Tapes

 

Fun late 00s horror about a serial killer's tape stash that took about a decade to get released. It disguises a low budget (I assume) well with the mockumentary style, and most performances are at least competent. Some creepiness without being gratuitous, but still not one for people who don't like horror.

 

3/5

 

Megan Is Missing

 

Another found footage job that recently gained notoriety on Tiktok. It's dogshit. Terrible performances, prurient directing that left me suspicious of the director as a person, and gratuitous scenes that it didn't feel like the film had earned.

 

Spoiler

American directors, in particular, seem to love feigning shock about sexualised schoolchildren whilst gazing, slack-jawed at them for extended periods of time.

 

1/5

[JamesC]

The Menu.

I thought this was great fun. I hate all that pretentious food wank, so the satire was quite satisfying for me.
 

4/5

 

The Lawnmower Man.

I'd recorded this over Christmas, having never seen it before. I was a teenager when it came out and can remember some friends going to see it but I think I was ill or something, so missed out. 
I think the film is generally regarded as being pretty poor but I really enjoyed it.  It's incredibly dated and the whole production feels low budget. The music and sound effects are like something out of an episode of '90s Outer Limits.
The 'Flowers for Algernon' style story is handled pretty well though. Jeff Fahey does a great job and is pretty convincing as the idiot turned VR god and Pierce Brosnan looks like he's having great fun as the permanently exasperated doctor.

The scenes set in the VR world have a lot of charm to them too.
This has made me want to play the Megadrive game.  
 

3/5