Film What's the Last Film You Saw? v. Tell Us What You Thought!

[Snafu in the Void]

'Donnie Darko' was running on the telly tonight. Haven't seen it since I was like 15. What the fuck is going on in that movie!?

I love Donnie Darko. Takes a few viewings to get the full picture. It's about time travel... I think?

It's one of those movies that intentionally doesn't make sense because the objective is really to have the viewer decide what's happening.

There are several legitimate interpretations.

Donnie discovers time travel and goes back in time to save his girlfriend by killing himself, therefor altering the time line so they never met (most common)

There are also symbols that point to Donnie being God/Jesus Christ (like the movie he watches when frank tells him to flood the school is "The Last Temptation of Christ").

It's also possible all of this was inside of donnie's head (he stopped taking his pills), and a few other theories.

I was borderline obsessed with the movie when I was a teenager. I haven't seen it in 15 years, I should watch it again

 

[Snafu in the Void]

all the tropes of horror films and didn’t follow through on various plot lines which didn’t make any sense anyway.

this is how I'd describe 90% of horror movies :/

I feel like the genre doesn't explore enough and continually panders to the same tropes for fear of failure/flopping

 

[ChemicallyEnhanced]

(rewatch, first time since I seen it when it came out) Cabin Fever 2: Spring Break (2009) - 3.5 stars - by far my least favourite of the franchise (including the remake). 90% of the infected characters literally just vomit blood and nothing else....despite it being a skin/soft tissue disease. This is also the movie where a character looks up the symptoms in a medical book and they make it canon (although this is rejected in the next movie and all of the other movies) that what they are suffering from is Necrotizing Fasciitis. Now, director Eli Roth did BASE the disease in the first movie - Cabin Fever (2002) - on his own experience contracting N.F. as a youth (adding in aspect from other skin diseases) but that's all it was: inspiration. I'll focus on the disease in this movie rather than the original since they changed the symptoms quite a bit. First (in all the movies), the virus is incredibly contagious, while N.F. had a low risk of contagion. I've already said most characters here just vomit blood, which is not a symptom of N.F. It also doesn't cause heavy bleeding as the tissues are already dead by the time the slough off.
They tried to make this part horror and part gross-out comedy.
Things I did like were the music and cartoon intro's and outro's showing who and how the infection spreads even further. I also like that a character was smart enough the amputate his lower arm upon spotting the rash/hives on his wrist. If you are unable to seek medical attention, this is literally the only way to stop is spreading.

Overall, I stan this series. I REALLY want a fifth movie. After seeing the first movie, I was OBSESSED with skin diseases and read and watched endless things on the likes of Necrotizing Fasciitis, Toxic Epidermal Necrolysis, Gas Gangrene and similar.

 

[ghostfreak]

Last few films watched, am a sucker for possession films and found footage (none here) but always on the look out for a decent one.

Anna was a weird film it was the one I liked above with the trailer ‘The Offering’. It’s like they just tried to cram in every horror trope they could.

 

[hydroazuanacaine]

Let Me In

finished the book this morning. i saw the swedish one 10+ years ago. don't remember anything about it. this version is good. it's a better movie than the book is a book. 500+ pages is a lot, and the screenplay does well. plenty of nods to the book to appease readers concerning chops. wimps out on the pedo stuff. the change creates a different thread of creepy -- the photo strip and "now & later" lyrics -- but doesn't add to the theme. stays on track using he Romeo and Juliet allusions, 80s 10pm propaganda, and interference from the detective.

it looks good. shot on film. there is some cgi. used with reserve to do something vital to the film that could not have been accomplished otherwise. abby's feeding is hyper violent in an awesome manner. the movements are cool and i'm glad they are included. the boy has to accept the monster. the audience gets to see it instead of cuts to black.

chloe is adorable as a literally man eating lo. the first scene with her meeting the boy and acting all withdrawn feels forced. which is kinda the script's fault; the dialouge could have used some adjustment for american film. either i warmed up to it or she falls into groove.

the bloody kiss is a dope addition.

 

[Cream Gravy?]

I watched Boxcar Bertha two days ago. It was okay. Martin Scorsese's earlier works aren't exactly great but many are more inspired than his later flicks. I certainly enjoyed this one more than both Mean Streets and The Irishman. David Carradine in his roll as 'Bill' (I wonder if Tarantino saw this film?) was wonderful, and the film moved along at a decent pace. The ending was a bit surprising and more violent than I expected, but decent.

All in all not a bad film, but not terribly exciting. Decent 30s period piece at least.

Oh yeah, shout out to Roger Corman for producing this one. I guess this was before he moved to producing purely B-flicks towards the 80s.

6.5/10

 

[hydroazuanacaine]

Let the Right One In

the swedish adaption, which precedes the american. it's more artsy. has a quiet to it that creates an eerie atmosphere and compliments a bright white lighting style (that reminds me of argento's Phenomena). except for a terrible scene of cgi cats, the movie feels like it is not only set but made in the 80s.

the american version is better. Let the Right One In sticks too close to the book. squeezing in all that subplot creates a less impactful story. wasn't even a big fan of it where it had plenty of room in the book. and while the american version is less stark and more gory and has shitty color grading and other hollywood characteristics, it does a better job with the book's themes. the swedish movie doesn't leave room for much more than plot.

on the note of theme, i hear lindqvist also felt that the american version's "now & later" bit betrayed the story. and that his short story "Let the Old Dreams Die" is written in response. annoying reeves did that. gimmicky. because it's so incongruent, it can be ignored.

the swedish version has its own transgression. when oskar resheathes and drops the knife, like he realizes his interest in violence is wrong or that he isn't capable. he choosing love above all else, full knowing the violence it comes with.

 

[Cream Gravy?]

Tears of the Sun (2003)

An okay Navy SEAL movie starring Bruce Willis. Decent performances from all involved, beautiful panoramic images of Central Africa, and accurate-ish military equipment for the team all aided in making it an entertaining watch, but it came up short on plot.

In the end it just seemed like pandering, trying to get me to cry over the soldiers who die and the civilians who are murdered in a Nigerian genocide. But I didn't cry, and it felt kinda like a cheap ripoff of Hotel Rwanda, even though Hotel Rwanda came out a year later. Overall, the film simply lacked substance.

6/10

 

[ChemicallyEnhanced]

Candyman (2021) - 4 stars - Excellent reboot. Maybe a little over-hyped, but I definitely enjoyed it, especially how it ended.

Old (2021) - 4.5 stars - I was excited for this after seeing the trailers and honestly, it was even better than I expected. Loved it.

 

[Cream Gravy?]

Wife and I started watching the extended/director's cut versions of the first four Alien films yesterday, watched the first two. The director's cut for Alien was okay, not really worth fussing over, but Aliens extended cut added so much more plot depth and we greatly enjoyed it.

Hoping to convince Mrs. Gravy to watch 3 and 4 with me today, at least 3. I wana get in the extended cuts while the theatrical ones are still fresh in my mind and I can compare them.

 

[Cream Gravy?]

We watched Alien 3 last night, the extended cut. I honestly don't know why they cut this film short and altered it so much; several scenes were cut from the theatrical release and replaced with better ones which added backstory, plus at least 15 minutes of extra footage was seamlessly spliced in.

Now that I've seen the extended cut for this one, I can't say I'd ever recommend the theatrical cut. Unlike Alien, Alien 3 adds a lot more material to the extended cut and in doing so becomes a better film.

We still laughed at the 1992 CGI alien scenes though. It looked like it was humping the victims from time to time, hard not to laugh lol

 

[blistersinthedark]

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010)

Hard to put the experience of watching this into words. A meditation on the flows between life and death, human and animal, past and present, memories and dreams, etc. Allows for a myriad of interpretations and resists imposing any sort of rigid rational narrative reconstruction. Needless to say it's fairly psychedelic, with some stunning images and engrossing sound design. And it has people in gorilla suits.

 

[Cream Gravy?]

The extended cut of Alien: Resurrection was not as good as the theatrical release somehow; more shitty early 2000s CGI is thrown in randomly and the intro (which I quite liked) is cut for some scene of a guy squishing a freakin' fly... yeah, not great. Only one or two scenes benefited the film, the rest just made it worse. I'd recommend just watching the theatrical release in the future.

 

[assclass]

mchales navy. i confused it with down periscope but was still entertained.

 

[birdup]

Melbourne is set to become the most locked down city in the history of the world on October 4th. It feels like I've been stuck inside forever. I've been watching a lot of 80s/90s horror films to pass the time.

Just finished the Critters quadrilogy.

The first one held up surprisingly well, but - then again - it's a nostalgic film for me so I'm probably biased. There was a definite decline in quality with Critters 2, but I still really enjoyed it. I love terrible 80s horror films. So, again: YMMV.

Critters 3 was Leonardo DiCaprio's cinematic debut. The cast is all over the place. I wouldn't cast most of the actors in a student film. The entire film is dubbed, badly. The editing is terrible. It often makes no sense. It's a fucking disaster. I loved it.

Critters 4 (like Hellraiser 4) is set in deep space. I went in with extremely low expectations and I was pleasantly surprised. It's much better than Critters 3. There are some really solid actors, including Oscar nominated Brad Dourif (Lord of the Rings, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) and Angela Bassett. The production is tight and polished. And, perhaps most importantly, Charlie (the alcoholic redneck bounty hunter) has a decent amount of screen time.

 

[birdup]

Just finished watching "The Empty Man" on Disney+. It blew me away. I fucking loved it. This film manages to be both art and trash simultaneously. It is very much a genre film, but - at the same time - it isn't. The first 20 minutes or so is stunning, then it starts to descend into bullshit horror tropes and I almost turned it off, but it just keeps taking weird and unexpected turns.

Empty Man is ambitious. It is weird. It isn't a safe, by-the-numbers film. It is a series of headfucks. I wouldn't be at all surprised if I found out the director was an acid fiend.

8/10 (drugs and popcorn recommended)

 

[deficiT]

HOLY shit, just finished Malignant. It was as good as advertised. Definitely recommend it to anyone who enjoys a good horror flick.

 

[deficiT]

End of Watch - 9/10

one of my favorite films of recent times jake gyllenhaul is a really underrated actor imo really pulls you into the two main characters due to the way its filmed as a personal blog.

end always hits me hard

Yeah man it's a great movie I've always loved it.

 

[deficiT]

HOLY shit, just finished Malignant. It was as good as advertised. Definitely recommend it to anyone who enjoys a good horror flick.

I give it a 9/10. Honestly haven't had a horror film draw me in like this one in a minute. Directed by James wan, who directed the first saw movie, conjuring, and insidious

 

[blistersinthedark]

The Empty Man

Now that's the stuff. All over the place stylistically (somehow straddles cosmic horror, giallo/slasher, urban legend, police procedural) and wearing its influences on its sleeve, but ultimately feels like its own thing and knows how subtly to poke fun at itself while maintaining a serious sense of existential dread. Highly recommended.