What films have you watched recently?

skullfunkerry

Offset said:

Hell Hole (2024), Prime.

Another evening, another low-budget horror.  An assorted crew of Serbian and American frackers are prospecting in Serbia when they dig up the body of a Napoleonic-era French soldier - who miraculously appears to be alive.  Hereafter, things go decidedly downhill in a fairly predictable fashion.

This creature-feature offers nothing new.  From the first frame, you know this is low-rent. Settings, film quality, cast.  Directed by and starrig a husband and wife team, I suspect most of the limited budget was soaked up by the FX - which are crap :-)

Anyway... it drags on inexorably to a hackneyed Thing-esque ending as the frackers are whittled down one by one or inadvertently top one another (and that isn't a spoiler).  Oh, and the soundtrack is bloody irritating.

What I can say is that this was an order of magnitude better than Light from a couple of nights ago.  Sadly, that isn't saying a lot but this wasn't quite as boring and had its' (rare) moments.

3/10.

We’ve been watching quite a few of those Z-list movies that Amazon seems to have an endless supply of. They’ve pretty much all been utterly shit, but several of them have been (unintentionally) hilarious.

Tonight we watched A Guide to Dating at the End of the World, again on Prime. Wasn’t expecting much, but actually genuinely enjoyed it. More of a rom-com than the Sci-fi comedy it was billed as, it didn’t break any new ground but it did what it did pretty well. Solid 8/10 I reckon.

DrCornelius

Alien Romulus at our local fleapit again 

Very good , harks back to the first Alien with the story line and a certain character’s reappearance (no spoilers)

Unknown young cast and the chap who plays the artificial human in particular was brilliant 

8 out of 10

sinbaadi

Rebel Ridge

Felt like a remake of something from the 80s.  Very by the numbers Roadhouse type situation.

The motive for them doing all that corrupt stuff though....  No spoilers here.  Just.  Yeah. 

That said I did like it and it captured my attention for 2 hours so. 

7/10

Haych

Anna (Netflix)

Spy drama.  

Anna (Sasha Luss) is living with an abusive criminal partner when she is "recruited" into the KGB by Alex (Luke Evans).  She is told she will have to give five years service and then she will earn her freedom.

After training, she is placed in Paris as a fashion model and her missions are managed by KGB second in command (I think) Olga (Helen Mirren), and then finds out that she will be on the books until she's dead or too old to continue.

Anna then basically becomes the KGB's assassin in Paris carrying out multiple kills until her identity is compromised by the CIA.

Things then become a bit complicated.

It's not a bad film in terms of the plot but it's weirdly executed with the timeline in the first half hour dancing all over the place and you'e never really sure what you're watching.  After establishing the protagonist as a model and assassin the story goes back to her life before being recruited and for about ten minutes you're left wondering what on earth is going on.

It's also not helped by Netflix - the backstory dialogue is all in Russian but Netflix doesn't automatically subtitle those scenes so you miss what's happening until you manually turn on subtitles, which is then irritating when the dialogue returns to English!

It does this again in another part of the film.  Highly annoying.

Some of the action sequences are beautifully choreographed, a bit too well actually, they look more like an elaborate dance than fight scenes and as polished as they are it detracts from the reality of what is meant to be occurring on screen.

Some of the scenes are overly violent, too.  I'm sure the brutality of what is occurring can be portrayed without the graphic content.

Otherwise, not a bad film for burning an evening after dinner.

7/10

Brio

I saw it on release. Thought it was excellent.

Stratavarious

Capricorn One (1977)

A not that great movie that is actually great to while away a couple of hours…. I watch it every few years. 

7/10

UnclePsychosis

Watched The Suicide Squad

I had put this off because all of the other DC films have been wank but finally got talked into watching it. 

This, however, was quite pleasingly insane, with some great visuals, just the right level of surreal insanity for a comic book film, and if scene where Peter Capaldi says "I think you might be surprised by my answer" doesn't invoke tears of laughter then I reckon you're not human. 

ICBM

Stratavarious said:

Capricorn One (1977)

A not that great movie that is actually great to while away a couple of hours…. I watch it every few years. 

7/10

It’s a better film for the commentary it makes on conspiracy theories than for the actual film itself, if that makes sense - although it’s certainly not a bad film at all.

stufisher

Just catching the last hour of Fury right now ... one of my favourite war movies.

My late dad was RAOC, a Normandy vet and I saw Fury (the tank) in person being moved at Bovington a few years ago, so lots of reasons to watch.

Notwithstanding, as a movie I think it just tells it right!

Never less than a 9/10

stufisher

Help required ... I've tried to upload a video clip using Imgur, as I would a pic, but I'm failing ... can someone advise on how to fix?

Stratavarious

ICBM said:

Stratavarious said:

Capricorn One (1977)

A not that great movie that is actually great to while away a couple of hours…. I watch it every few years. 

7/10

It’s a better film for the commentary it makes on conspiracy theories than for the actual film itself, if that makes sense - although it’s certainly not a bad film at all.

Yep… NASA even helped make it… it clearly shows how even the most basic fake would be impossibly hard.

Offset

Ready Or Not (2019), Disney+

This interrupted my planned viewing schedule this week as a chum recommended I watch it.  So...

A young woman marries into an extremly wealthy (and extremely dysfunctional) family.  On her wedding night, she is told by her new husband that it is tradition for people marrying in to the family to join them in playing a game on their wedding night.  A little non-plussed but keen to please her new in-laws, she acquiesces and takes part.  The card she selects from a myserious box to determine the game played is the card you don't want to draw - she has a short head start and has to hide within the vast house and evaded detection until sunrise. There is, of course, a twist in this scenario...

This is billed as a horror-comedy.  The problem is that the comedy element just isn't very funny and doesn't really work.  As a suspenseful and very gory tongue-in-cheek movie however it works.  It successfully draws on a number of influences and overall it's pretty enjoyable.

Flawed, yes - but a fun 95 minutes.

6/10.

boogieman

The Mutations. Talking Pictures. 

A real oddity from 1974, allegedly a horror film, although it’s definitely not scary. Donald Pleasance as a nutty professor obsessed with melding humans with plants, for no discernible reason. Tom Baker plays a deformed freakshow owner who has a sideline in capturing unwitting students for the Nutty Professor to experiment on. 

It’s slow and ploddy, the acting is universally lousy (even from usually reliable Mr Pleasance), the plot is ludicrous, it has no saving graces beyond some nice 60/70’s cars and the odd bit of gratuitous nudity. What is genuinely disturbing though is the “freaks” from the freak show, who are mostly real people with various deformities…. all very exploitative and somewhat uncomfortable to watch. 

I’ve seen it described as “Frankenstein crossed with Freaks”. That’s pretty much it, but they forgot to mention that it’s also complete crap. 1.5/10. 

Longtallronnie

Watching Furiosa atm. 

The action looks good but the soundtrack feels like it doesn’t fit what’s happening on screen. Set pieces that look like they should be exciting feel quite sedate and boring. Anyone else find this? 

mgaw

Watched Furiosa this evening, found it pretty lame tbh. 

djspecialist

I've just watched Dark Waters, the story of how DuPont poisoned people with the byproducts from Teflon manufacturing, and was eventually made to pay compensation.

Not sure I'll sleep very well tonight.

Longtallronnie

Yeah I’ve been bored throughout most of it but I’m pretty it’s because of the sound. I’m still watching atm and the soundtrack is awful. I don’t know how to describe it just yet but it just doesn’t do the visuals justice. 

Longtallronnie

THERE’S STILL 30 MINUTES LEFT!!

Offset

Longtallronnie said:

THERE’S STILL 30 MINUTES LEFT!!

I can't wait to find out what you're watching 

Longtallronnie

Offset said:

Longtallronnie said:

THERE’S STILL 30 MINUTES LEFT!!

I can't wait to find out what you're watching 

Furiousa, could’ve been good but the shit soundtrack ruined it for me.